| Abstract: |
This study examines cognitive and non-cognitive skills and their transmission
from parents to children as one potential candidate to explain the
intergenerational link of socio-economic status. Using representative data
from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we contrast the impact of parental
cognitive abilities (fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence) and
personality traits (Big Five, locus of control) on their adolescent and young
adult children’s traits with the effects of parental background and childhood
environment. While for both age groups intelligence and personal traits were
found to be transmitted from parents to their children, there are large
discrepancies with respect to the age group and the type of skill. The
intergenerational transmission effect was found to be relatively small for
adolescent children, with correlations between 0.12 and 0.24, whereas the
parent-child correlation in the sample of adult children was between 0.19 and
0.27 for non-cognitive skills, and up to 0.56 for cognitive skills. Thus, the
skill gradient increases with the age of the child. Furthermore, the skill
transmission effects are virtually unchanged by controlling for childhood
environment or parental education, suggesting that the socio-economic status
of the family does not play a mediating role in the intergenerational
transmission of intelligence and personality traits. The finding that
non-cognitive skills are not as strongly transmitted as cognitive skills,
suggests that there is more room for external (non-parental) influences in the
formation of personal traits. Hence, it is more promising for policy makers to
focus on shaping children’s non-cognitive skills to promote intergenerational
mobility. Intergenerational correlations of cognitive skills in Germany are
roughly the same or slightly stronger than those found by previous studies for
other countries with different institutional settings. Intergenerational
correlations of non-cognitive skills revealed for Germany seem to be
considerably higher than the ones found for the U.S.. Hence, skill
transmission does not seem to be able to explain cross-country differences in
socio-economic mobility. |