Do teachers make better parents? How teachers' children do better at school

My doctor used to have pictures of his kids on his surgery wall and it occurred to me, during a consultation, that they must be very healthy. Well that is what you would expect I think? One would expect them to have a healthy lifestyle and generally not to go short on medical care. It then occurred to me that, by a similar logic, one might expect the children of educators to do well at school. There might be a genetic link, of course. Educator-parents could offer practical help with tuition or perhaps just help imbue an appreciation of education. And in a world where information on school quality is very limited (Ireland being a particularly good example, alas) one would expect teachers to make better decisions about the choice of schools for their own kids: when you are in the business you know what’s what.

So I decided to investigate using PISA data which has detailed data on parents occupation and other relevant data. The resulting paper has just been published in Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies.

Do teachers make better parents? The differential performance of teachers children at school

This paper investigates whether teenagers are educationally advantaged if their parents are educators, using data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Great Britain and Ireland from 2000. Examining whether teachers’ children do better at tests of reading ability, the results show that children whose fathers teach at third level or whose mothers teach at second level do better. The paper also shows that teenagers are more likely to be helped with their schoolwork if their mothers are educators. The evidence tends to suggest that where teenagers benefit from a parent as a teacher it is through specific assistance from the mother and a more general effect from the father.

Infant mortality and maternal education around the world

The Health Metrics site linked below has this excellent graphic showing the relationship between mothers education and infant mortality around the world and how it changes over time.

Socio-economic predictors of breastfeeding in Ireland

When a child is born the first investment decision a parent makes is whether to breastfed the child. This usually occurs within the first hour. Of course decisions taken beforehand, like diet, also have an important role. Since breastfeeding is generally considered to have important physical and other benefits for both child and mother, understanding who is more likely to breastfeed (& ultimately why) is important. This is particularly the case in Ireland where breastfeeding has a relatively low incidence.
It might be conjectured that social class has some role to play. High SES mothers may have access to better information (or be better able to process the information) as well as support networks. They have less of a need to return to work. On the other hand, the opportunity cost of their time may be higher.
The graph below shows the proportion of children breastfed by socio-economic class (where there are two adults in the household, it is the highest of the two classes).

There is a very striking gradient with children from manual backgrounds being much less likely to be breastfed.
Of course, one can't be sure what the reason for this link is. Class is correlated with education, income and other factors. Looking at the gradient with respect to the primary carer's education one finds:

Again there is a strong pattern with children of more educated mothers being much likely to be breastfed. What happens if we put both factors together in a model? Well both play an independent role although education seems to be the dominant factor. Interesting, household income does not have a significant role to play given social class & maternal education.
One can find other predictive factors: younger mothers and those from rural areas are less likely to breastfed. But these factors seem to have a fairly small role compared to social class and education.
If we look at mother's behaviour during pregnancy for clues as to whether they breastfed one comes across an interesting anomaly. Those who smoked during pregnancy are about 9% less likely to breastfeed, other things being equal, whereas those who consumed alcohol are about 3% more likely.

Like Father, Like Son? A Note on the Intergenerational Transmission of IQ Scores

Like Father, Like Son? A Note on the Intergenerational Transmission of IQ Scores
by Sandra E. Black, Paul Devereux, Kjell G. Salvanes
published in: Economics Letters, 2009, 105 (1), 138-140

Abstract:
More able parents tend to have more able children. While few would question the validity of this statement, there is little large-scale evidence on the intergenerational transmission of IQ scores. Using a larger and more comprehensive dataset than previous work, we are able to estimate the intergenerational correlation in IQ scores, examining not just average correlations but also how this relationship varies for different subpopulations. We find that there is substantial intergenerational transmission of IQ scores; an increase in father’s IQ at age 18 of 10% is associated with a 3.2% increase in son’s IQ at the same age. This relationship holds true no matter how we break the data. This effect is much larger than our estimated elasticity of intergenerational transmission of income of approximately .2.