Father Presence and the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment

Abstract

We use administrative data from Norway to analyze how fathers’ presence affects the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment. Our empirical strategy exploits within family variation in father exposure that occurs across siblings in the event of father death. We find that longer paternal exposure amplifies the father-child association in education and attenuates the mother-child association. These changes in the intergenerational transmission process are economically significant, and stronger for boys than for girls. We find no evidence these effects operate through changes in family economic resources or maternal labor supply. This lends support for parental socialization as the likely mechanism.