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Education and family background : mechanisms and policies

Salvanes, Kjell Gunnar; Björklund, Anders
Working paper
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URI
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/163224
Date
2010-05
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  • Discussion papers (SAM) [578]
Abstract
In every society for which we have data, people’s educational achievement is positively

correlated with their parents’ education or with other indicators of their parents’

socioeconomic status. This topic is central in social science, and there is no doubt that

research has intensified during recent decades, not least thanks to better data having

become accessible to researchers. The purpose of this chapter is to summarize and

evaluate recent empirical research on education and family background. Broadly

speaking, we focus on two related but distinct motivations for this topic. The first is

equality of opportunity. Here, major the research issues are: How important a determinant

of educational attainment is family background, and is family background—in the broad

sense that incorporates factors not chosen by the individual—a major, or only a minor,

determinant of educational attainment? What are the mechanisms that make family

background important? Have specific policy reforms been successful in reducing the

impact of family background on educational achievement? The second common starting

point for recent research has been the child development perspective. Here, the focus is

on how human-capital accumulation is affected by early childhood resources. Studies

with this focus address the questions: what types of parental resources or inputs are

important for children’s development, why are they important and when are they

important? In addition, this literature focuses on exploring which types of economic

policy, and what timing of the policy in relation to children’s social and cognitive

development, are conducive to children’s performance and adult outcomes. The policy

interest in this research is whether policies that change parents’ resources and restrictions

have causal effects on their children.
Publisher
Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. Department of Economics
Series
Discussion paper
2010:14

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