Are There Increasing Returns to the Intergenerational Production of Human Capital? Maternal Schooling and Child Intellectual Achievement

Abstract

Information on ability and achievement test scores of sibling children, many of whom had mothers who continued their schooling between births, is used to test the hypothesis that maternal schooling augments the production of children's human capital, that there are increasing returns to human capital. Estimates from models that take into account heterogeneity in maternal endowments could not reject this hypothesis and suggest benefits to postponed childbearing. In particular, they suggest that postponement of the initiation of childbearing by two years among women who are tenth-graders would result in a 5 percent increase in their children's achievement test scores.