Mother's Occupational Status and Children's Schooling

Abstract

After a long tradition of research on the intergenerational mobility of men, stratification studies in the late 1970s and 1980s began to include women in their analyses. Most studies, however, still rely primarily on characteristics offathers to measure family background status. Using a large national cross-sectional data set, this study describes the influence of mother's occupational status on children's educational attainment. I compare the strengths of maternal and paternal influences and use birth cohorts to examine whether the relative influence of mothers has changed. The main findings are: Maternal occupational status has a strong effect on schooling, this effect is independent offather's education and occupation, it persists through the schooling career, and it is as important for sons asfor daughters. Some evidence suggests that the influence of mother's occupation has increased while the influence offather's occupation has decreased. In contrast, mother's education has always been as important as father's education. In general, the findings underscore the positive effects of maternal labor force participation on child outcomes through the high-status jobs many married women now hold. At the same time, this study suggests that the independent influence of mother's socioeconomic status may lead to an accumulation of educational advantages and disadvantages in subsequent generations, possibly reducing the intergenerational mobility offamilies.