Educational Attainment in Denmark: The role of parents' education and childhood living conditions

Abstract

We consider the importance of parental education and childhood living conditions on children's educational attainment in Denmark. Data are two surveys of living conditions merged with register data and children included are children of interviewees' aged 25 - 35 in 1998. We estimate educational attainment by applying multinomial logit models, both with and without living condition variables. Parents' education is found to be very important, and especially regarding mother's education. Thus, having a bettereducated mother is more important for the educational attainment than having a bettereducated father. Introducing living conditions in the model decreases the importance of parents' education, but only marginally. Dividing the sample into sons and daughters, an asymmetry is found. Generally, mothers matter most for their daughters, while fathers matter most for their sons. In addition, sons and daughters are affected by different living condition variables.