Do Parents' Social Skills Influence Their Children's Sociability?

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of parents' social skills on children's sociability, using the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). This survey, like some other national surveys, lacks detailed information on parents; to remedy this deficiency, we construct a measure of parents' "sociability" skills based on their occupational characteristics from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). The sociability relationship varies across parents and children by gender, but remains statistically significant (especially between fathers and sons), even after controlling for a variety of other background characteristics.JEL Classification: J24; J62.

Parental Background and Union Formation Behavior of Native Born Individuals in Sweden with a Foreign Background

“…These are relatively small changes which indicate that the association between parental composition and union type is quite robust to adding the commonly used predictors of union types in the regressions. This finding is consistent with the literature with regard to explanations such as ethnic compatibility, ethnic identity as well as discrimination in the marriage market, where having a native born parent increases the likelihood of having a native born spouse [21,31,37]. In addition, it can be seen that having a native born father is not significantly different than having a native born mother in terms of union formation behavior of males; however, this is not the case for females.…”

Intergenerational analysis of social interaction and social skills: An analysis of U.S. and U.K. panel data

“…Using two data sets covering the U.K. and the U.S., we find robust evidence of intergenerational links between the social interaction of parents and their offspring, which is consistent with the findings of Duncan et al (2005) and Okumura and Usui (2010). Moreover, these links exist after controlling for an extensive set of factors covering family background including income and wealth as well as attempting to control for issues related to reverse causality and endogeneity in a variety of ways.…”

“…Within the economics literature, using data drawn from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, Okumura andUsui (2010) explore the effect of parents' social skills on their children's sociability. Respondents aged between 20 and 28 were asked about their sociability as a child such as the number of clubs they participated in during high school, whereas, due to the absence of information on their parent's social skills, parent's social skills are proxied by the people skills needed in the occupations the respondent's parents were in when the respondent was aged 14.…”

Intergenerational Analysis of the Donating Behaviour of Parents and their Offspring

“…For example, Guiso et al () model the intergenerational transmission of priors about the trustworthiness of others within an overlapping generation's framework, whilst Dohmen et al () explore the intergenerational transmission of trust and risk attitudes using the German Socio‐Economic Panel . Finally, using data drawn from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, Okumura and Usui () explore the effect of parents’ social skills on their children's sociability. Thus, the intergenerational transmission of a wide range of skills, economic outcomes and attitudes has been the subject of much theoretical and empirical scrutiny in the economics literature.…”