Abstract
Since the early 1970s the importance of mothers’ socioeconomic characteristics on their children’s educational and occupational attainment has been acknowledged. However, it is not clear if fathers’ characteristics have a stronger influence because men usually have stronger attachments to the labour market, or alternatively mothers’ characteristics are more important because of their greater role in children’s socialization. This study addresses this question by comparing the influence of father’s and mother’s education and occupation on student performance in literacy and numeracy using data from 30 countries. The impact of mother’s education is usually greater or comparable to that of father’s education. In contrast, substantially stronger effects for mother’s occupational status compared to father’s were rare. In most countries the impact of mother’s socioeconomic characteristics (education plus occupation) on student performance is comparable to that for father’s. Of the four indicators of socioeconomic background, father’s occupational status and mother’s educational attainment tend to have stronger effects, although many countries do not conform to this pattern. There are indications that the relative importance of mother’s characteristics have increased over time.
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Notes
Assortative mating is the tendency for the reproductive pairing of individuals to have more traits in common than would likely be the case if mating were random. This is especially the case for education.
This conclusion must remain tentative since it is based on few studies. The finding that mother’s education has similar effects to father’s education on university education among adoptees suggests mother’s education may have a direct causal effect in some contexts.
In the analysis of the PISA data the coefficient for age is invariably small, negative and most often statistically not significant.
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Marks, G.N. Are Father’s or Mother’s Socioeconomic Characteristics More Important Influences on Student Performance? Recent International Evidence. Soc Indic Res 85, 293–309 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-007-9132-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-007-9132-4