Parental assortative mating and the intergenerational transmission of human capital

• Published in: Labour economics 2022-08, Vol.77, p.102047, Article 102047
• Main Authors: Bingley, Paul, Cappellari, Lorenzo, Tatsiramos, Konstantinos
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Assortative mating; Human capital; Inequality; Intergenerational transmission
• ISSN: 0927-5371; 1879-1034
• DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2021.102047

•We provide a novel empirical model of educational correlations within the family and we apply it to Danish register data.•We show that on average 75 percent of the intergenerational correlation in education is accounted for by parental assortative mating.•We show that about half of the parental correlation in education contributes to intergenerational transmission.•We document a change in the nature of intergenerational transmission over time, with an increasing importance of one-to-one parent-child relationships. We study the contribution of parental educational assortative mating to the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment. We develop an empirical model for educational correlations within the family in which parental educational sorting can translate into intergenerational transmission jointly by both parents, or transmission can originate from each parent independently. Estimating the model using educational attainment from Danish population-based administrative data for over 400,000 families, we find that on average 75 percent of the intergenerational correlation in education is driven by the joint contribution of the parents. We also document a 38 percent decline of assortative mating in education for parents born between the early 1920s and the early 1950s. While the raw correlations also show decreases in father- and mother-specific intergenerational transmissions of educational attainment, our model shows that once we decompose all factors of intergenerational mobility, the share of intergenerational transmission accounted for by parent-specific factors increased from 7 to 27 percent; an increase compensated by a corresponding fall in joint intergenerational transmission from both parents, leaving total intergenerational persistence unchanged. The mechanisms of intergenerational transmission have changed, with an increased importance of one-to-one parent-child relationships.