Intergenerational Transfer of Human Capital: Evidence for Gender Role from Iran

Abstract The increased emphasis on the role of human capital in economic growth has raised the level of interest in its mechanism of accumulation. Countries differ in the efficiency with which they teach their young, as they do in their savings and investment behavior. The recent household economics literature has drawn attention to the critical role that parents play in the transfer of human capital to the next generation. In this paper I use data from a 1987 survey of 5000 households in rural and urban areas of Iran to study the role of gender in the parent-child education relation. Previous empirical studies based on data from other countries have shown that mothers have a stronger impact on their children?s education than do fathers and, in addition, mothers have a stronger impact on daughters and fathers on sons. The reduced-form results for Iran show that parental education matters greatly for child education but that there is little evidence of asymmetry based on gender. Income does appear to influence the gender gap and, similarly, girls? education is more sensitive to place of residence. Fixed effects estimates that correct for unobserved household heterogeneity, and variation in supply of education reproduce the above results, except for an asymmetry in father?s education in rural areas. The analysis presented here questions the prevailing opinion in Iran that governments are responsible for educational attainment of the young. The results suggest that parents also play an important role.