Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Europe: Evidence from SHARE

This paper extends the previous literature on the intergenerational transmission of human capital by exploiting variation in compulsory schooling reforms across nine European countries over the period 1920-1956. My empirical strategy follows an IV approach, instrumenting parental education with years of compulsory schooling. I nd some evidence of a causal relationship between parents' and children's education. The size of the estimated e ect is large: an additional year of parental education will raise the child's education by 0.44 of a year. I also nd that mothers' schooling is more important than fathers' schooling for the academic performance of their o spring. The results are robust to several speci cation checks.