Parental Involvement and the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment

Several authors have speculated that better-educated parents’ higher levels of parental involvement may influence the intergenerational transmission of education; however, this hypothesis has yet to be formally tested. We begin to fill this gap in the literature by estimating augmented intergenerational mobility models that include measures of parental involvement using rich data from the Child and Young Adult Supplement to the National Longitudinal Survey (NLSY79). In a sample of 3,208 children linked to 2,031 mothers, we find that much of the correlation between mothers’ and children’s education is driven by college-educated mothers reading to their children. Looking across household types, this relationship is stronger for children of married parents and teenage parents, respectively.