The Impact of Fathers’ Job Loss during the 1980s Recession on their Child’s Educational Attainment and Labour Market Outcomes

The research on intergenerational correlations in outcomes is increasingly moving from measurement into assessment of causal transmission mechanisms. This paper analyses the causal impact of fathers’ job loss on their children’s educational attainment and later economic outcomes. To do so, we isolate the effect of job loss associated with major industry contractions, mainly in manufacturing, during the 1980s recession by mapping industry level employment change data from 1980 to 1983 into the British Cohort Study (BCS). Children with fathers’ who were identified as being displaced did significantly worse in terms of their GCSE attainment than those from non-displaced families. A child with a displaced father obtained on average 17 grade points lower or half a GCSE grade A-C less than their otherwise identical counterparts, the equivalent of 2.2% lower wages as an adult.