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

尽管改善处境不利儿童的结果符合国家利益，但人们对儿童成长的环境与儿童后来的成功之间的因果关系知之甚少。虽然有大量关于先天和后天的文献表明，父母的影响超出了遗传，但几乎没有证据表明哪些具体因素是重要的。这项研究探讨了哪些家庭背景特征对孩子的结局有重要影响。这项研究最初侧重于两个家庭特征：父母的教育程度和家庭规模。具体地说，这项研究考察了这些家庭特征与儿童健康、教育和劳动力市场结果之间的因果关系。鉴于生育选择可能与教育选择共同决定，这项研究还将研究父母教育、出生时间和完整家庭规模之间的中间联系。这项研究将特别关注教育对青少年生育的影响。这项研究将通过分离家庭背景特征的外源变异并将其应用于挪威的丰富数据集来阐明这些问题。根据挪威统计局不同的行政登记和人口普查数据，汇编了挪威全部人口的综合数据集，包括家庭背景、年龄、婚姻状况、出生国、教育史、邻里信息和就业信息。与文献中的其他数据相比，挪威数据集的一个巨大优势是，研究人员可以将2000年成年子女与父母的特征联系起来，即使在子女没有与父母住在一起的情况下也是如此。这项研究还将利用教育的外生差异(使用挪威将义务教育从7年增加到9年的教育改革，并在不同的时间在不同的城市实施)和家庭规模的外生差异(使用双胞胎出生和/或父母的性别偏好引起的差异)来分离这些特征对儿童的真正因果影响。如果可能，这项研究将把挪威的结果与美国人口普查数据的估计进行比较。

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.