The intergenerational effects of parental higher education: Evidence from changes in university accessibility

摘要

We examine the causal relationship between the educational attainment of parents and that of their children using quasi-experimental variation from changes in parents' access to university generated by the geographical expansion of the Finnish university system between the late 1950s and early 1970s. Our results suggest that, for the children of parents affected by the changes in university accessibility, there is a strong positive spillover effect of around 0.5 from parent's to child's attained years of education. Our analyses using alternative parental and child outcomes suggest that the effect of parental education is partly driven by assortative mating and may also be related to children's improved school performance. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.