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

家庭背景的影响：来自美国和挪威的证据

• 批准号: 0417284
• 负责人: Sandra Black
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-07-15 至 2009-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0417284&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Effects; Family; Background; Evidence; U.S.

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.

尽管国家对改善处境不利的孩子的结果的兴趣，但对孩子成长的环境与后来的孩子成功之间的因果关系知之甚少。 尽管关于自然与养育的广泛文献表明，父母在遗传学以外还具有其他影响，但几乎没有证据表明哪些特定因素很重要。这项研究涉及哪些家庭背景特征对孩子的结果很重要。 该研究最初侧重于两个家庭特征：父母的教育和家庭规模。具体而言，该研究研究了这些家庭特征与儿童健康，教育和劳动力市场成果之间的因果关系。 鉴于生育能力的选择可以通过教育选择共同确定，因此这项研究还将研究父母教育，出生时间和完成家庭规模之间的中间联系。 将特别关注教育对青少年生育的影响。这项研究将通过隔离家庭背景特征的外源性变化并将其应用于挪威丰富的数据集来阐明这些问题。基于挪威统计数据的不同行政注册和人口普查数据，已经汇编了挪威的整个人口的全面数据集，包括有关家庭背景，年龄，婚姻状况，出生国，教育历史，邻里信息和就业信息的信息。挪威数据制定的一个很大的优势比文献中的其他数据相比，研究人员可以在2000年将成年子女与父母的特征联系起来，即使在孩子不与父母同住的情况下。这项研究还将利用教育的外在差异（使用挪威的教育改革，将强制性教育从7年增加到9年，在不同时间在不同的市政当局实施），以及家庭规模的外源性差异（使用双胞胎和/或父母性别偏好的出生而引起的差异）来隔离这些特征对儿童对这些特征的实际因果影响。 在可能的情况下，研究将将挪威的结果与使用美国普查数据进行估计。