Intergenerational Transmission of Education. A case study from Iceland

• Main Author: Emil Dagsson 1993-
• Other Authors: Háskóli Íslands
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Hagfræði; Menntun; Menntamál; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1946/29075

This paper’s aim is to identify Iceland’s intergenerational transmission of education. We compared the education of parents and children to that of other neighboring countries. For this, tables were made from EU-SILC 2011 results that found that Iceland’s educational distributions patterns where similar to those of other Nordic countries. Also, using recent data collected by Maskína, tables were made that showed Iceland’s educational proportions distributions. When we compared these tables to the former ones we found them to be similar. Some indicators, however, could imply a higher tendency towards less mobility in the newer table. Using Maskína’s data, we found correlations between parents’ and their children’s education as well as correlations between parents’ educational emphasis and children’s education. We found that educational emphasis correlates only slightly less with children’s education than parent’s education, indicating the importance of parents’ emphasis on education in their children’s upbringing. Comparing our findings with a paper from Hertz et al. (2007) we found that Iceland had a correlation coefficient below the averages of other Nordic countries. Performing a multi-linear regression analysis, we found that parents’ emphasis on education was a significant factor in predicting children’s education. The coefficient was lower than the regressor coefficient, which explained the impact of the education of parents on children’s education, in all regressions except for one. We also found that factors such as residence, i.e. in the capital area or in the countryside, and gender had significant effects on children’s education as well as altering the effects of mother’s education on their children’s education. Finally, our findings of regressor coefficients were compared to results from Hertz et al. (2007). The comparison showed that our findings were lower than for all other OECD countries included in Hertz et al. paper. These findings indicate strong educational mobility in Iceland.