Inequalities in Educational Outcomes: How Important Is the Family?
Using rich administrative and longitudinal survey data for Denmark, we investigate sibling correlations in educational outcomes, which serve as a broad measure of the importance of family and community background. We find sibling correlations of up to 0.38, suggesting that more than a third of the variation in educational achievement can be explained by family background. Our results further reveal that parents’ socio‐economic background can account for a large part of the sibling correlation. Other family characteristics such as family structure, social problems and parents’ educational preferences only contribute to explaining sibling similarities at lower levels of the educational distribution.
Bredtmann, J. und N. Smith (2018), Inequalities in Educational Outcomes: How Important Is the Family?. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 80, 6, 1117-1144
DOI: 10.1111/obes.12258