Parents’ basic skills and
children’s test scores
Augustin De Coulon, Elena
Meschi and Anna Vignoles
Background
• The UK has a poor record in terms of the basic
skills of its adult population
– Moser report: 20% (40%) of adults in England had
severe literacy (numeracy) difficulties (DfEE, 1999).
– UK in bottom half of the OECD basic skills
distribution (Leitch 2006).
• Having poor basic skills has clear consequences
for the adults themselves, in terms of their
economic circumstances (earnings, employment)
• Are there implications for the cognitive and non
cognitive skill of the next generation? Should we
target low skill adults?
Aims
• Investigate how the basic skills of adults
(numeracy and literacy) relate to the early
cognitive and non-cognitive skill of their
children
– Test for an inter-generational relationship
– Focus on skills parents have when they raise
their children not correlation of early ability
• 2004 British Cohort Study survey which
provides basic skill assessments for adults
and cognitive/non cognitive tests for
children
Literature
• Literature on the inter-generational transmission
of education and skill (e.g. Behrman and Rosenzweig, 2002; Black,
Devereux and Salvanes 2005; Black et al. 2009; Carneiro et al, 2007)
• Literature on skill formation and early cognitive
and non cognitive development (e.g. Blanden, Gregg and
Macmillan, 2007; Brown, McIntosh and Taylor, 2009; Cunha and Heckman,
2008, Ermisch et al. 2002; Michael, 2004, 2005; Todd and Wolpin, 2007)
• Causal positive effect from parental education on child’s
education
• Positive inter-generational correlation in early ability –
difficult to separate genetic and environment effects
• Early years sensitive to parental investments in terms of
cognitive and non cognitive skill development
Data
• Face to face survey of the British Cohort
Study (1970 cohort) carried out in 2004
• All respondents (CM) assessed in terms of
their literacy and numeracy in adulthood.
– 9,665 cohort members in the core dataset
– 4,792 randomly selected into “Parent and
Child” elements of the survey.
– 2,824 (59 per cent) has at least one child
Model
• Dependent variables
– Index of child cognitive skill age 3-6
– Measure of child non cognitive skill age 3-6
•
•
•
•
Subscript c = child; subscript p = parents or family;
Sp cognitive/non cognitive skills of the child’s parents;
X set of exogenous child characteristics;
F family structure
S cp   0  1S p   2 X cp   3 Fp   cp
Model
• Measure extent to which parents’ skills in
adulthood provide an additional
explanation of child’s early cognitive and
non cognitive skill
• Adjust SE for clustering within households
• Estimate by gender of both parent and
child
S cp   0  1S5   2 S34   3 X cp   4 Fp   cp
Covariates
•
•
•
•
•
Sex
Age of child
Number of siblings
First born
Family structure
• Parental education
• Household income
• Family receives state
benefits
• Occupation and
employment of parent
• Parenting, attitudes
etc.
Identification strategy
• Rely on early measure of parental IQ and
ability
• If we find relationship between parents
basic skills and children’s cognitive
outcomes is this causal?
– Relationship may be due to unobserved
factors correlated with both parents’ and
children skills
Parental skill measures age 5
• British Ability Scales Edition 2
– Cognitive functioning using ability scales
– Separates non verbal and spatial ability
– Designed to cover wide age range and
abilities
– Found to be reliable, particularly as measures
of general ability and verbal IQ (Cook, 1988)
Parental skill measures in
adulthood
• Series of multiple-choice questions, followed by a set of
open-ended questions (Parsons and Bynner, 2005).
• Multiple choice adapted from the Skills for Life National
Adult Basic Skills Baseline Survey. Numeracy test
devised by CDELL at Uni of Nottingham.
• Distributions similar to those found in national data on
assessments of UK adults, obtained from the Skills for
Life Survey (see Williams et al., 2003)
Offspring’s measures of skill
• Adapted British Ability Scales Second
Edition (BAS II).
– Naming Vocabulary
– Early Number Concepts
• Non-cognitive skill measured using the
“Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire”
(SDQ)
Measures used in the model
• Synthetic indices of parental and child skill
• Constructed using Principal Component Analysis
(PCA)
• Interpret these indices as measures of rank of
each parent or child in terms of test scores
– (Cawley et al. 1996)
Descriptive Statistics
Model of child cognitive skill age 3-6
(1)
Parent test index age 5
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
0.195***
(0.0304)
0.117***
(0.0282)
0.142***
(0.0319)
0.117***
(0.0284)
0.143***
(0.0319)
0.00485
(0.0342)
0.112***
(0.0284)
0.134***
(0.0312)
-0.00231
(0.0341)
X
914
914
914
914
914
0.495
0.499
0.508
0.508
0.520
0.177***
(0.0269)
Parent test index age 34
Parent SDQ test score age 5
Controls
Observations
R-squared
Notes: Robust standard errors (clustered by family) in parentheses; *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 Controls
include child age, gender, number of siblings and whether the cohort member is a lone parent.
Model of child SDQ age 3-6
(1)
Parent’s own SDQ test score age 5
(2)
0.109***
(0.0383)
Parent’s own test score index age 5
-0.0617**
(0.0263)
Parent’s own test score index age 34
Constant
Controls
Observations
R-squared
(3)
-0.111
(0.145)
941
0.011
-0.115
(0.146)
941
0.007
-0.107***
(0.0287)
-0.100
(0.145)
941
0.017
(4)
(5)
0.0968**
0.0889**
(0.0386)
(0.0384)
-0.0142
-0.0230
(0.0285)
(0.0284)
-0.0937*** -0.0939***
(0.0314)
(0.0310)
-0.0854
-0.0169
(0.145)
(0.157)
941
0.026
x
941
0.041
Robustness
• Separately for different tests (vocabulary,
early number etc)
• By gender of parent
• By gender of child
• By parental education
• IV estimates
Conclusions
• We measure parental skill in both
childhood (IQ type measures) and in
adulthood (cognitive skill measures)
• Early and adult measures of parental skill
remain highly significant when included in
the model
• Conditional on parents’ early ability, parent
skill level in adulthood is a strong predictor
of the child’s own skill level
Conclusion
• We show, consistent with existing literature, a
strong inter-generational correlation between
parent ability in childhood and the early ability of
their children
• But knowing a parent’s cognitive skill in
adulthood does provide additional information
• Adult skill levels are easier to observe and can
therefore be potentially used to target “at risk”
children
Conclusion
• Parental cognitive skill in adulthood, i.e.
their literacy and numeracy skill, is
significantly correlated with their children’s
propensity to have emotional and
behavioural difficulties.
• Holds even when we control for the
parent’s early cognitive and non-cognitive
skill.
• Can help us target children at risk of these
emotional and behavioural problems.