The Effect of Education on the Relationship between Genetics, Early-Life Disadvantages, and Later-Life SES / Silvia H. Barcellos, Leandro Carvalho, Patrick Turley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barcellos, Silvia H.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Carvalho, Leandro.

Turley, Patrick.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w28750.

NBER working paper series no. w28750

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2021.

Summary:

This paper investigates whether education weakens the relationship between early-life disadvantages and later-life SES. We use three proxies for advantage that we show are independently associated with SES in middle-age. Besides early, favorable family and neighborhood conditions, we argue that the genes a child inherits also represent a source of advantages. Using a regression discontinuity design and data for over 110,000 individuals, we study a compulsory schooling reform in the UK that generated exogenous variation in schooling. While the reform succeeded in reducing educational disparities, it did not weaken the relationship between early-life disadvantages and wages. This implies that advantaged children had higher returns to schooling. We exploit family-based random genetic variation and find no evidence that these higher returns were driven by genetically-influenced individual characteristics such as innate ability or skills.

Notes:

Print version record

May 2021.