Mothers, Fathers, and Gendered Mobility: Intergenerational Effects of Schooling on Daughters and Sons

• In Event: Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 11. Intergenerational Inequality and Mobility

Abstract

This paper studies causal social mobility by asking whether an increase in parents’ schooling raises children’s schooling. Theoretically, parents may transmit schooling through investments, cultural resources, and occupational pathways. But gender matters: collective household models imply that mothers and fathers can matter differently because they vary in preferences, bargaining power, and interaction time. Transmission may also be stronger within same-gender parent–child pairs through role-modeling and gendered socialization. Because of these theoretical accounts, I estimate effects separately for mother–daughter, mother–son, father–daughter, and father–son dyads, rather than a unitary, degendered parent–child dyad. Empirically, I combine linked, full-population U.S. census data (1850–1940) with compulsory schooling reforms for variation in parents’ schooling, and estimate effects on adult children’s completed years of schooling. Results are mostly positive or near zero, but clearly heterogeneous by dyad: fathers’ schooling generally transmits more strongly than mothers’, and effects tend to be larger for sons than for daughters. At higher compulsory schooling requirements, maternal estimates even become negative, especially for daughters, although these are not statistically significant. Overall, the findings point away from unitary, degendered accounts and toward gendered transmission mechanisms and unequal parental control over resources and investments, while role-modeling seems to play less of a role. One implication, in line with recent literature, is that schooling breaks the link between mothers' and children's human capital, while fathers' transmission remains unaffected.

Author

• Jannik Track, European University Institute