Abstract
From an evolutionary point of view, sex differences in intergenerational transmission of income may be influenced by the Trivers-Willard (T-W) effect: Low status parents should invest more in daughters, whereas high status parents are expected to invest more in sons. This bias in parental investment may result in status-dependent sex biased parental support for higher education and educational attainment and should therefore affect the level of intergenerational income transmission for the sons and daughters. We used the data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) to model the effect of parental financial investment on the child's income and educational attainment controlling for the number of siblings. The observed sex differences in intergenerational income transmission demonstrate that sons profited more from parental income and education in terms of their own income than daughters. Furthermore, we showed that fathers with a high socioeconomic index (SEI) invest more in their sons' education in terms of completed years of education and financial support during college. In contrast daughters of low SEI fathers completed more years of education and received more financial support than sons of low SEI fathers. However, the pattern in intergenerational income transmission might be better explained as a product of sociological factors and reproductive trade-offs in later life rather than as a consequence of the T-W effect.
Highlights
In modern western societies, access to resources is mainly determined by wealth that in turn is generated by income and to some degree by inheritance
In order to compare the benefit from parental education vs. parental income for both sexes, this study focuses on quantifying the effects in interpretable units
For the comparison of the effects of early life factors on women and men, respectively, we examined a model woman and a model man: Each has three siblings, parents who earned the median income for this sample, a father with ten years of schooling and a mother with eleven years of schooling
Summary
Access to resources is mainly determined by wealth that in turn is generated by income and to some degree by inheritance. Parental resources contribute to children’s wealth in a variety of ways: do parents leave substantial sums to their offspring upon their death, but they actively invest in their children’s education and career opportunities which in turn may increase their offspring’s future income. Daughters and sons may not profit from their parents’ resources (Smith et al, 1987; Cox, 2003). From an evolutionary point of view, men’s striving for wealth and status can be explained by the association between their access to resources and higher reproductive success.
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