Work

Education and Adult Cognition in a Low-Income Setting: Differences among Adult Siblings

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: The relationship between completed education and adult cognition is investigated using data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey. We compare adult siblings to account for shared, difficult-to-measure characteristics that likely affect this relationship, including genetics and parental preferences and investments. After establishing the importance of shared family background factors, we document substantively large, significant effects of education on cognition in models with sibling fixed effects. In contrast, the strong positive correlation between education and adult height is reduced to zero in models with sibling fixed effects, suggesting little contamination in the education-height association beyond factors common to siblings.

Source: Journal of Human Capital

DOI: 10.1086/734385

Authors: Yuan S. Zhang, Elizabeth Frankenberg, Duncan Thomas

Institutions: Columbia University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University

Language: English

Topic: Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development