Intergenerational Persistence of Skills and Socioeconomic Status

Abstract

This paper describes how the socioeconomic status (SES) of parents relates to the formation and development of the skills and preferences of their teenage children, which have proven to be key to understanding differences in life outcomes. The study used data from a novel survey, conducted in Mexico, that recorded cognitive and non-cognitive skills and social preferences of both parents and children. It analyzed the relationship between the SES of parents and their children’s skills, and found that children’s skills were consistently related to parental skills, and that intergenerational persistence of skills was higher for cognitive than for non-cognitive skills or social preferences. It also found that the cognitive skills gap between the first and fifth quintile of SES was related mainly to characteristics like parents’ own skills, years of schooling, and aspirations for their children, but that these parental characteristics were less important in explaining non-cognitive skills and preferences.