Tag Archives | Cognitive Development

Direct and Indirect Effects of Grandparent Education on Grandchildren's Cognitive Development: The Role of Parental Cognitive Ability

Markus Klein, Michael Kühhirt

Sociological Science July 26, 2021
10.15195/v8.a13


The social stratification literature is inconclusive about whether there is a direct effect of grandparent resources on grandchildren’s educational outcomes net of parental characteristics. Some of this heterogeneity may be due to differences in omitted variable bias at the parental level. Our article accounts for a more extensive set of parent characteristics and explores the mediating role of parental cognitive ability in more detail. It further tackles methodological challenges (treatmentinduced mediator–outcome confounders, treatment–mediator interaction) in assessing any direct influences of grandparents by using a regression-with-residuals approach. Using the 1970 British Cohort Study, our results show that the direct effect of grandparent education on grandchildren’s verbal and numerical ability is small and statistically nonsignificant. Parental cognitive ability alone can account for more than two-thirds (numerical ability) or half (verbal ability) of the overall grandparent effect. These findings stress the importance of cognitive ability for intergenerational social mobility processes.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Markus Klein: School of Education, University of Strathclyde
E-mail: markus.klein@strath.ac.uk

Michael Kühhirt: Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne, and Department of Social Sciences, Goethe-University Frankfurt
E-mail: michael.kuehhirt@uni-koeln.de

Acknowledgments: The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants in the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) for providing their information; the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education, University of London, for collecting and managing the data; the Economic and Social Research Council for funding BCS70; and the UK Data Service for storing the data and making them available. Earlier versions of this research were presented at the International Sociological Association (ISA) World Congress in 2018 and the ISA RC28 Spring Meeting in 2021.

  • Citation: Klein, Markus, and Michael Kühhirt. 2021. “Direct and Indirect Effects of Grandparent Education on Grandchildren’s Cognitive Development: The Role of Parental Cognitive Ability.” Sociological Science 8:265-284.
  • Received: May 24, 2021
  • Accepted: June 22, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Richard Breen
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a13


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