The impact of family background and educational attainment on cultural consumption: A sibling analysis

Abstract

In this paper, the author uses sibling models to estimate the total impact of family background on cultural consumption. Sibling analysis allows one to incorporate the impact of unmeasured family background into the models. Taking total family background into account also makes it possible to explore whether there is so-called family bias in intra-generational effects, in casu the effect of educational attainment on cultural consumption, due to the exclusion of variables tapping shared family background. The results indicate that the effect of education on cultural consumption is only biased by measured family background, not by unmeasured family background. Parents' cultural resources are the most important measured determinants of sibling cultural participation. The impact of the educational attainment of siblings is relatively small. Older siblings' cultural consumption is affected more strongly by family background than the cultural consumption of their younger brothers and sisters.