February 2007

IZA DP No. 2608: Intergenerational Education Transmission: Neighborhood Quality and/or Parents’ Involvement?

published as 'Neighborhood Effects and Parental Involvement in the Intergenerational Transmission of Education' in: Journal of Regional Science, 2011, 51 (5), 987 - 1013

We develop a model that analyzes the impact of residential neighborhood and parents’ involvement in education on children’s educational attainment and test it using the UK National Child Development Study. We find that the better the quality of the neighborhood, the higher the parents’ involvement in children’s education, indicating cultural complementarity. For high-educated parents, the child’s educational attainment is more affected by the parents’ involvement than by the neighborhood quality while, for low-educated parents, the neighborhood quality seems to play the major role.