Parents' Education and their Adult Offspring's Other-Regarding Behavior

Publikation: Working paperForskning

  • Ulrik Haagen Nielsen
Does socioeconomic background when measured by parental educational attainment explain the heterogeneity in adults' other-regarding preferences? I test this by using data from two online experiments -- a Dictator Game and a Trust Game that were conducted with a broad sample of the Danish adult population. I match the experimental data with high-quality data from the Danish population registers about my subjects and their parents. Whereas previous studies have found socioeconomic status, including parental educational attainment, to be predictive for children's generosity, I find no such evidence among adults.

This result is robust across age groups and genders. I provide two explanations for this. First, sociodemographic characteristics in general appear to be poor predictors of adults' other-regarding behavior. Second, by using Danish survey data, I find that Danish parents' educational attainment appears to be uncorrelated with how important they find it to teach their children to "think of others". More speculative explanations are also provided.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
UdgivelsesstedKbh.
UdgiverØkonomisk institut, Københavns Universitet
Antal sider54
StatusUdgivet - 2014
NavnUniversity of Copenhagen. Institute of Economics. Discussion Papers (Online)
Nummer03
Vol/bind2014
ISSN1601-2461

Bibliografisk note

JEL Classification: C91, D63, D64

ID: 104025620