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Title: Father's Education and Children's Human Capital: Evidence from the World War II GI Bill

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2006

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Abstract: Children who grow up in more highly educated families have better labormarket outcomes as adults than those who grow up in less educated families,but we do not know whether this is because education bestows parents withskills that make them better parents or because unobservable endowments thatcontribute to the parents' education levels are shared by their children. Thispaper attempts to improve our understanding of the causal processes thatcontribute to intergenerational mobility by exploiting variation in fathers'education induced by the WWII G.I. Bill. Identificatin rests on the timing of thewar: the GI Bill had different effects on different cohorts depending on theirlikelihood of military service and the probability that schooling had beencompleted before the war began. I find that a one year increase in a father'seducation reduces the probability that his child is retained in school by about2-3 percentage points. This implies that parental schooling levels have an affecton children's outcomes that is independent of their innate ability and suggeststhat public policies aimed at increasing educational attainment may haveimportant intergenerational effects.

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Authors: Page, Marianne

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Publication Number: 06-33

Institution: University of California, Davis

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Publisher Location: Davis, CA

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education

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