The effect of education on spousal education: A genetic approach
dc.contributor.author | Barban, N | |
dc.contributor.author | De Cao, E | |
dc.contributor.author | Oreffice, S | |
dc.contributor.author | Quintana-Domeque, C | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2021-10-14T10:30:30Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2021-06-19 | |
dc.description.abstract | We investigate the causal effect of education on spousal education using a sample of couples from the Health and Retirement Study. We estimate reduced-form linear matching functions derived from a parsimonious matching model which links spouses’ education. Using OLS we find that an additional year in husband's (resp. wife's) education is associated with an average increase in wife's (resp. husband's) education of 0.41 years —95% CI: 0.37, 0.45 (resp. 0.63 years —95% CI: 0.57, 0.68). To deal with endogeneity issues due to measurement error and omitted variables, we use a measure of genetic propensity (polygenic score) for educational attainment as an instrumental variable. Assuming that our instrument is valid, our 2SLS estimate suggests that an additional year in husband's (resp. wife's) education increases wife's (resp. husband's) education by about 0.49 years —95% CI: 0.35, 0.62 (resp. 0.76 —95% CI: 0.56, 0.96). Since greater genetic propensity for educational attainment has been linked to a range of personality and cognitive skills, we allow for the possibility that the exclusion restriction is violated using the plausible exogenous approach by Conley et al. (2012). A positive causal effect of education on spousal education cannot be ruled out, as long as one standard deviation increase in husband's (wife's) genetic propensity for education directly increases wife's (husband's) education by less than 0.2 (0.3) years. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | European Research Council (ERC) | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | BA/Leverhulme Trust | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 71, article 102023 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1016/j.labeco.2021.102023 | |
dc.identifier.grantnumber | 865356 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.grantnumber | ES/S012486/1 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.grantnumber | SRG18R1/181165 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/127460 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Elsevier / European Association of Labour Economists | en_GB |
dc.relation.url | https://sites.google.com/site/climentquintanadomeque/replication-materials | en_GB |
dc.rights | © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | en_GB |
dc.subject | Causality | en_GB |
dc.subject | Genes | en_GB |
dc.subject | HRS | en_GB |
dc.subject | Instrumental variables | en_GB |
dc.subject | Matching | en_GB |
dc.subject | Plausibly exogenous | en_GB |
dc.title | The effect of education on spousal education: A genetic approach | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2021-10-14T10:30:30Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 0927-5371 | |
dc.description | This is the final version. Available on open access from Elsevier via the DOI in this record | en_GB |
dc.description | Replication materials are available at https://sites.google.com/site/climentquintanadomeque/replication-materials. Any errors contained in the paper are our own. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | Labour Economics | en_GB |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | en_GB |
dcterms.dateAccepted | 2021-06-15 | |
rioxxterms.version | VoR | en_GB |
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate | 2021-06-19 | |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | en_GB |
refterms.dateFCD | 2021-10-14T10:26:37Z | |
refterms.versionFCD | VoR | |
refterms.dateFOA | 2021-10-14T10:33:29Z | |
refterms.panel | C | en_GB |
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/