On Intergenerational Transmission of Reading Habits in Italy: Is a Good Example the Best Sermon?

Abstract

The intergenerational transmission of preference an d attitudes has been less investigated in the liter ature than the intergenerational transmission of education and income. Using the Italian Time Use Survey (2002-2003) conducted by ISTAT, we analyse the intergenerational transmission of reading habits: are children more likely to allocate time to studying and reading whe n they observe their parents doing the same activit y? The intergeneration transmission of attitudes towar ds studying and reading can be explained by both cu ltural and educational transmission from parents to childr en and by imitating behaviours. The latter channel is of particular interest, since it entails a direct infl uence parents may have on child’s preference format ion through their role model, and it opens the scope fo r active policies aimed at promoting good parents’ behaviours. We follow two fundamental approaches to estimation: a “long run” model, consisting of OLS intergenerational type regressions for the reading habit, and “short run” household fixed effect model s, where we aim at identifying the impact of the role model exerted by parents, exploiting different expo sure of sibling to parents’ example within the same househ old. Our long run results show that children are mo re likely to read and study when they live with parent s that are used to read. Mothers seems to be more important than fathers in this type of intergenerat ional transmission. Moreover, the short run analysi s shows that there is a pure imitation effect: in the day o f the survey children are more likely to read after they saw their parents reading.