Parental Education and Offspring Outcomes: Evidence from the Swedish Compulsory School Reform

Abstract

We use the Swedish compulsory school reform to estimate the causal effect of parental education on sons’ outcomes. To this end, we use data from the Swedish military enlistment register on the entire population of males and consider outcomes, such as cognitive skills, noncognitive skills, and various dimensions of health at the age of 18. We find positive effects of maternal education on sons’ skills and health status but no effects of paternal education. One reason behind this result may be that the fathers affected by the reform did not face any labor market returns to their increased schooling. (JEL I21, J12, J24)