Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics
Working Papers,
Lund University, Department of Economics
No 2015:22: Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Is It a One-Way Street?
Petter Lundborg () and Kaveh Majlesi ()
Additional contact information
Petter Lundborg: Department of Economics, Lund University, Postal: Department of Economics, School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Box 7082, S-220 07 Lund, Sweden
Kaveh Majlesi: Department of Economics, Lund University, Postal: Department of Economics, School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Box 7082, S-220 07 Lund, Sweden
Abstract: Studies on the intergenerational transmission of human capital usually assume a one-way spillover from parents to children. But what if children also affect their parents’ human capital? Using exogenous variation in education, arising from a Swedish compulsory schooling reform in the 1950s and 1960s, we address this question by studying the causal effect of children’s schooling on their parents’ longevity. We first replicate previous findings of a positive and significant cross-sectional relationship between children’s education and their parents’ longevity. Our causal estimates tell a different story; children’s schooling has no significant effect on parents’ survival. These results hold when we examine separate causes of death and when we restrict the sample to low-income and low-educated parents.
Keywords: Intergenerational transmission; Human capital; Longevity; Compulsory schooling; Education
41 pages, August 10, 2015
Full text files
wp15_22.pdf
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