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

By on July 26, 2021 in Articles

Markus Klein, Michael Kühhirt

Sociological Science July 26, 2021
10.15195/v8.a13

Abstract

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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.
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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.

Supplemental Material

  • 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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It's All about the Parents: Inequality Transmission across Three Generations in Sweden

By on June 1, 2020 in Articles

Per Engzell, Carina Mood, Jan O. Jonsson

Sociological Science June 1, 2020
10.15195/v7.a10

Abstract
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A recent literature studies the role of grandparents in status transmission. Results have been mixed, and theoretical contributions highlight biases that complicate the interpretation of these studies. We use newly harmonized income tax records on more than 700,000 Swedish lineages to establish four empirical facts. First, a model that includes both mothers and fathers and takes a multidimensional view of stratification reduces the residual three-generation association in our population to a trivial size. Second, data on fathers’ cognitive ability show that even extensive controls for standard socioeconomic variables fail to remove omitted variable bias. Third, the common finding that grandparents compensate poor parental resources can be attributed to greater difficulty of observing parent status accurately at the lower end of the distribution. Fourth, the lower the data quality, and the less detailed the model, the greater is the size of the estimated grandparent coefficient. Future work on multigenerational mobility should pay less attention to the size and significance of this association, which depends heavily on arbitrary sample and specification characteristics, and go on to establish a set of more robust descriptive facts.
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Per Engzell: Nuffield College and Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford; Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University
E-mail: per.engzell@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Carina Mood: Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University; Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm
E-mail: carina.mood@sofi.su.se

Jan O. Jonsson: Nuffield College and Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford; Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University; Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm
E-mail: janne.jonsson@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Acknowledgments: This work received funding from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare (FORTE), grant no. 2016-07099. The first author also acknowledges support from Nuffield College and the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, The Leverhulme Trust. Previous versions of this study have been circulated under the title “Putting the Grandparents to Rest: False Positives in Multigenerational Mobility Research” and presented at the Swedish Institute for Social Research, the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR) Conference in Paris 2018, and the Population Association of America (PAA) Annual Meeting in Austin 2019. We thank participants at these occasions, in particular Robert Erikson, Sara Kjellsson, Simon Hjalmarsson, Are Skeie Hermansen, and Florencia Torche, for helpful comments and criticism. Thanks also to the Editor, Deputy Editor, and Consulting Editor at Sociological Science who handled our manuscript. Any errors remain our own.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Engzell, Per, Carina Mood, and Jan O. Jonsson. 2020. “It’s All about the Parents: Inequality Transmission across Three Generations in Sweden.” Sociological Science 7: 242-267.
  • Received: March 24, 2020
  • Accepted: April 13, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a10


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Grandparent Effects on Educational Outcomes: A Systematic Review

By on February 21, 2018 in Articles

Lewis R. Anderson, Paula Sheppard, Christiaan W. S. Monden

Sociological Science, February 21, 2018
DOI 10.15195/v5.a6

Abstract
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Are educational outcomes subject to a “grandparent effect”? We comprehensively and critically review the growing literature on this question. Fifty-eight percent of 69 analyses report that grandparents’ (G1) socioeconomic characteristics are associated with children’s (G3) educational outcomes, independently of the characteristics of parents (G2). This is not clearly patterned by study characteristics, except sample size. The median ratio of G2:G1 strength of association with outcomes is 4.1, implying that grandparents matter around a quarter as much as parents for education. On average, 30 percent of the bivariate G1–G3 association remains once G2 information is included. Grandparents appear to be especially important where G2 socioeconomic resources are low, supporting the compensation hypothesis. We further discuss whether particular grandparents matter, the role of assortative mating, and the hypothesis that G1–G3 associations should be stronger where there is (more) G1–G3 contact, for which repeated null findings are reported. We recommend that measures of social origin include information on grandparents.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lewis R. Anderson: Trinity College and Department of Sociology, University of Oxford
Email: lewis.anderson@sociology.ox.ac.uk

Paula Sheppard: Nuffield College and Department of Sociology, University of Oxford
Email: paula.sheppard@sociology.ox.ac.uk

Christiaan W. S. Monden: Nuffield College and Department of Sociology, University of Oxford
Email: christiaan.monden@sociology.ox.ac.uk

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Patrick Präg for his many useful comments and suggestions, to Guido Neidhöfer for sharing with us the results of his literature search, and to the participants of the Multigenerational Social Mobility Workshop held at Nuffield College, University of Oxford on September 21 and 22, 2017, for their comments. This research has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement number 681546 (FAMSIZEMATTERS).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Anderson, Lewis R., Paula Sheppard, and Christiaan W. S. Monden. 2018. “Grandparent Effects on Educational Outcomes: A Systematic Review.” Sociological Science 5: 114-142.
  • Received: November 3, 2017
  • Accepted: January 6, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a6

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