Parents' Current Income, Long-term Characteristics and Children's Education: Evidence from the 1970 British Cohort

This paper investigates the effect of parents’ current income and long-term;family characteristics on individuals’ highest educational qualification ob-tained;by age 26 using UK data from the 1970 British Cohort Study. The;issues of the possible sample selection bias produced by the not completely;random omission of current family income and that of its potential endo-geneity;are addressed, using a hot-deck multiple imputation procedure and;including an indicator of child ability, respectively. I find evidence that cur-rent;family income has a statistically significant positive impact on children’s;education, although it is one of negligible magnitude. Long-term family char-acteristics;are far more important.