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Childhood Circumstances and the Intergenerational Transmission of Socioeconomic Status

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Demography

Abstract

A large literature has documented the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status (SES). However, the mechanisms by which SES transmits across generations are still little understood. This article investigates whether characteristics determined in childhood play an important role in the intergenerational transmission. Using data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey, I document the extent to which childhood human capital accounts for the intergenerational SES correlation. My results imply that childhood health and nutrition, cognitive and noncognitive abilities, and early schooling account for between one-third and one-half of the relationship between parents’ SES and their offspring’s SES.

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Notes

  1. This article investigates how much of the intergenerational transmission of SES can be explained by the fact that children born to higher-SES parents accumulate more human capital during their early childhood. It is possible that SES may also transmit across generations through other channels; for example, children born to higher-SES parents may inherit nonhuman capital and family “connections.” The analysis of these channels is beyond the scope of the current article.

  2. For budgetary reasons, the survey used a single-stage cluster sampling; 33 barangays (17 urban, 16 rural) were randomly selected among 243 barangays.

  3. Children are given no time limit to answer each question, and the difficulty of the questions increases throughout the test.

  4. These figures were converted using the 2007 World Development Indicators by the World Bank.

  5. Stunting and wasting were defined as a height-for-age and weight-for-age below 2 standard deviations based on the World Health Organization reference data.

  6. Height-for-age and weight-for-age at 24 months are strongly correlated with birth weight even after parental SES is controlled for (results not shown in the table).

  7. The system of Eq. 5 can be rewritten in matrix form as follows:

    $$ x_{i}^{c}=\upbeta _{0}+\upbeta _{1}y_{i}^{p}+\upnu_{i}^{c}, $$
    (7)

    where

    $$ x_{i}^{c}=\left( \begin{array}{c} x_{i}^{1,c} \\ \vdots \\ x_{i}^{K,c} \end{array} \right) ;\upbeta _{0}=\left( \begin{array}{c} \upbeta _{0}^{1} \\ \vdots \\ \upbeta _{0}^{K} \end{array} \right) ;\upbeta _{1}=\left( \begin{array}{c} \upbeta _{1}^{1\prime } \\ \vdots \\ \upbeta _{1}^{K\prime } \end{array} \right); \ \text{and }\upnu _{i}^{c}=\left( \begin{array}{c} \upnu _{i}^{1,c} \\ \vdots \\ \upnu _{i}^{K,c} \end{array} \right) . $$
    (8)

  8. In Table 9, I use weight-for-age instead of weight-for-height because there are no weight-for-height standards to compute Z scores for children in this age range.

  9. One reason why height-for-age and weight-for-age may not be predictive of children’s schooling is that these were measured when children were 6–11 years old, rendering them poor proxies for health because they reflect both the outcome of the first growth spurt as well as the timing and trajectory of the second. Unfortunately, no other information was collected both for the cohort members and their siblings that could be used as an alternative proxy for health.

  10. The normalized regression coefficients are not reported in the table.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Anne Case, David Lee, Chris Paxson, and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl for their advice and support. I am also indebted to Silvia Helena Barcellos, Deforest McDuff, Ashley Ruth Miller, Francisco Perez Arce Novaro, Heather Royer, Jim Smith, and seminar participants at Princeton University. All remaining errors are mine.

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    Leandro Carvalho

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Carvalho, L. Childhood Circumstances and the Intergenerational Transmission of Socioeconomic Status. Demography 49, 913–938 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0120-1

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