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European Economic Review

Intergenerational Correlation and Social Interactions in Education

Journal Article
Reference
Bervoets, Sebastian and Yves Zenou (2017). “Intergenerational Correlation and Social Interactions in Education”. European Economic Review 92, 13–30. doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2016.11.005

Authors
Sebastian Bervoets, Yves Zenou

We propose a dynastic model where individuals are born into an educated or uneducated environment that they inherit from their parents. We study the impact of social interactions on the correlation in parent-child educational status, independently of any parent-child interaction. When the level of social interactions is decided by a social planner, we show that the correlation in education status between generations decreases very fast as social interactions increase. In turn, when the level of social interactions is decided by the individuals themselves, we show that the intergenerational correlation still decreases, although less rapidly than with exogenous social interactions.