Skip to main content
GGD PARC
Population Studies Center
  • About
    • PSC within Penn
    • Services
      • Administrative Services
      • Library & Information Services
      • IRB & Human Subjects
      • Computing Services
        • Social Sciences Computing
        • Room Reservations
        • Office of Software Licensing
        • Technology Purchasing Guide
        • Computer Lab Information
        • Instructional Technology & Pedagogy Support Services for Faculty
        • Latest Supported Computing Products from ISC
        • Computing Help
      • Resources
    • Information for Visitors
    • Contact Us
    • PSC Space
      • PSC Conference Room, Collaboration Space, and Commons Reservation Form
  • People
    • Research Associates
    • Research Affiliates
    • Postdocs & Visitors
    • GGD Faculty
    • Spotlight
    • Students
      • Students (Alphabetical)
    • Alumni
      • Alumni (Alphabetical)
    • Staff
    • Students on the Job Market
    • Emeritus Research Associates
  • Research
    • Primary Research Areas
      • New Dynamics of Population Diversity
      • Formal Demography and Demographic Methods
      • Child Development and Human Endowments
      • Structures of Inequality and the Life Course
      • Population and the Environment
      • International Population Research
    • Research Projects
    • Pilot Awards
      • Pilot Project Competition
    • Etienne van de Walle Prize
    • Penn @ PAA
  • Working Papers
  • Newsletters
  • News
    • Funding
    • Conferences & Workshops
    • NICHD Funding Opportunities
    • Videos
    • News (Admin)
  • Events
    • Colloquium
    • All Past Events
    • Past Colloquium Events
  • Ph.D. Programs
    • Demography Ph.D.
    • Sociology Ph.D.
  • Partnerships
    • Internal Allied Centers & Initiatives
    • External Allied Centers & Initiatives
    • Association of Population Centers
    • Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science
    • NICHD Centers
    • NIA Centers

The Causal Effects of Parents’ Schooling on Children’s Schooling in Urban China

Commons Link

The Causal Effects of Parents' Schooling on Children's Schooling in Urban China

Working Paper Number
2020-37
Publication Year
2020
Authors
Jere R. Behrman
Yuan Hu
Junsen Zhang
Paper Abstract
Parental schooling is widely thought to improve child outcomes. But most studies on parental-child relations are associative, without control for estimation problems, such as unobserved intergenerationally-correlated endowments, if causality is of interest. The few exceptions are relatively recent studies that focus on high-income countries (HICs), with their much different contexts than the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in which the vast majority of children globally are growing up. This paper estimates the causal (conditional on the assumptions for the model) relationships between parents’ schooling and their children’s schooling in the most populous LMIC, using adult identical (monozygotic, MZ) twins data from urban China. Our ordinary least-squares estimates show that one-year increases in maternal and parental schooling are associated, respectively, with 0.4 and 0.5 more years of children’s schooling. However, if we control for genetic and other endowment effects by using within-MZ fixed effects, the results indicate that mothers’ and fathers’ schooling have no significant effects on children’s schooling. Our main results remain with various robustness checks, including controlling for measurement error. These results suggest that the positive associations between children’s and parents’ schooling in standard cross-sectional estimates in this major LMIC are mainly due to the correlation between parents’ unobserved endowments and their schooling and not the effects of their schooling per se.

Main navigation

nichd

Quick Links

  • IRB & Human Subjects
  • NIH Public Access Policy
  • PSC Library Catalog
  • Sociology Department
  • Economics Department
  • RESERVE SPACE

DONATE TO THE PSC

About Us

The Population Studies Center (PSC) at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) was founded in 1962 and stands as an international leader in research and training on the dynamic structure, organization, and health and well-being of human populations. The services that PSC provides have been funded by infrastructure grants awarded by the Population Dynamics Branch at Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) since 1978. The center and its associates are also supported by research grants and contracts awarded by federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation and by private foundations. Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences is the administrative home of the PSC and provides generous dedicated support to the center.

Read more

Contact

Tel: 215-898-6441
Fax: 215-898-2124
239 McNeil Building
3718 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6298
[Map & Directions]
Contact Us
twitter.com/pennpsc
facebook.com/pennpsc
PSC Directory

Penn A-Z - Penn Calendar

© 2025 University of Pennsylvania
Report Accessibility Issues and Get Help