A comparison of family and neighborhood effects on grades, test scores, educational attainment and income—evidence from Sweden

Lindahl, Lena

doi:10.1007/s10888-010-9144-1

“…In Nordic countries, approximately 45 percent of the variance in education can be attributed to family and neighborhood (Raaum et al, 2006;Lindahl, 2011), whereas this share is more than 60 percent in Germany (Schnitzlein, 2014) and up to 70 percent in the US (Mazumder, 2011). is only slightly different from the German context. 24 Björklund and Jäntti (2012) find brother correlations of approximately 0.5 for cognitive skills in Swedish data.…”

Section: Cross-national Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills, and family background: evidence from sibling correlations

Anger

¹

,

Schnitzlein

²

2016

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThis paper estimates sibling correlations in cognitive and non-cognitive skills to evaluate the importance of family background for skill formation. Based on a large representative German dataset including IQ test scores and measures of non-cognitive skills, a restricted maximum likelihood model indicates substantial influences of family background on skill formation. Sibling correlations in non-cognitive skills range from 0.223 to 0.464; therefore, at least one-fifth of the variance in these skills results from sibling-related factors. Sibling correlations in cognitive skills are higher than 0.50; therefore, more than half of the inequality in cognition can be explained by family background. Comparing these findings with those in the intergenerational skill transmission literature suggests that intergenerational correlations capture only part of the influence of family on children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills, as confirmed by decomposition analyses and in line with previous findings on educational and income mobility.JEL codes: J24, J62

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“…They provide a descriptive summary measure of how much of the outcome of neighbors can be attributed to the shared neighborhood. Solon et al (2000), Page and Solon (2003), Raaum et al (2006), Lindahl (2011) and Nicoletti and Rabe (2013) provide evidence for the US, Norway, Sweden and the UK, finding only weak neighbor correlations compared to sibling correlations for monetary and education outcomes.…”

mentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Thus, childhood neighborhoods are substantially less important for adult outcomes than families. Lindahl (2011) assesses the importance of family versus neighborhood factors. She estimates correlations in income and education among siblings and children from the same neighborhood for about 13,000 individuals in Sweden.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Is it the family or the neighborhood? Evidence from sibling and neighbor correlations in youth education and health

Bügelmayer

¹

,

Schnitzlein

²

2017

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW BerlinThis series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.The decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly.Any opinions expressed in this series are those of the author(s) and not those of DIW Berlin.Research disseminated by DIW Berlin may include views on public policy issues, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. AbstractIn this paper we present sibling and neighbor correlations in school grades and cognitive skills as well as indicators of physical and mental health for a sample of German adolescents. In a first step, we estimate sibling correlations and find substantial influence of shared family and community background on all outcomes. To further disentangle the influence of family background and neighborhood, we estimate neighbor correlations. Our results show that for all outcomes, estimated neighbor correlations are clearly lower than estimated sibling correlations. However, especially for cognitive skills and mental health, neighbor correlations are still substantial in relation to sibling correlations. Thus, compared to existing results from other countries, the influence of the neighborhood is not negligible in Germany for these outcomes. JEL codes: J62

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“…Another strand in the literature use variance decomposition techniques to assess the role of neighborhood and family background variables on adult outcomes, see Solon et al (2000). Raaum et al (2006) and Lindahl (2010) use this approach on Norwegian and Swedish data, respectively, and find that neighborhoods are clearly less important than families. The evidence in Raaum et al (2006) suggests that the impact of the neighborhood, in contrast to family background, has declined over time.…”

Section: Methodological Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Schools, ability, and the socioeconomic gradient in education choices

Falch

¹

,

Strøm

²

2013

The Journal of Socio-Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This paper provides evidence on the socioeconomic gradient in dropout and progression in upper secondary education in Norway. Using a rich data set covering all students transferring from compulsory education to upper secondary education in 2002, we find that student achievement at the end of compulsory school is the main predictor of dropout and delayed progression. The socioeconomic gradient is sensitive to the inclusion of prior achievement in the model. We find that the gradient is modest and non-linear, and related to dropout behavior and not grade repetition. The results are remarkably robust to controlling for a full set of school fixed effects. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor mayJEL-Code: H420, I200, J240.

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A comparison of family and neighborhood effects on grades, test scores, educational attainment and income—evidence from Sweden

Abstract: Neighborhoods, Siblings, Family background, J13, R23,

Cited by 61 publications

References 37 publications

Cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills, and family background: evidence from sibling correlations

Cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills, and family background: evidence from sibling correlations

Is it the family or the neighborhood? Evidence from sibling and neighbor correlations in youth education and health

Schools, ability, and the socioeconomic gradient in education choices

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