The Effects of Family Background: Evidence from the U.S. and Norway

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Despite national interest in improving the outcomes of disadvantaged children, little is known about the causal relationship between the environments in which a child grows and later success of the child. While there is an extensive literature on nature versus nurture that suggest parents have additional effects beyond genetics, there is little evidence as to what specific factors are important. This research addresses which family background characteristics matter for a child's outcome. The research initially focuses on two family characteristics: parent's education and family size. Specifically, the research examines the causal relationship between these family characteristics and children's health, education, and labor market outcomes. Given that fertility choice may be jointly determined with education choices, this research will also study the intermediate link between parental education, timing of births, and completed family size. Particular attention will be paid to the effects of education on teenage childbearing.This research will shed light on these questions by isolating exogenous variation in family background characteristics and applying it to a rich dataset from Norway. Based on different administrative registers and census data from Statistics Norway, a comprehensive data set has been compiled of the entire population in Norway, including information on family background, age, marital status, country of birth, educational history, neighborhood information, and employment information. A great advantage of the Norwegian data set over others in the literature is that the researchers can link adult children in 2000 to characteristics of their parents, even in cases where the children do not live with their parents. The research will also use exogenous variation in education (using an education reform in Norway that increased compulsory schooling from 7 to 9 years and was implemented in different municipalities at different times) and exogenous variation in family size (using variation induced by the birth of twins and/or parental sex preferences) to isolate the true causal effect of these characteristics on children. When possible, the research will compare the Norwegian results to estimates using US Census data.