Educational Reproduction in Great Britain: A Prospective Approach

We examine the extent to which the educational attainments of a generation are reproduced in Great Britain. We address a very specific question—what was the effect, among people born around the middle of the 20th century, of having acquired a University degree on the probability of having a child who also acquires a degree? We consider the two central processes involved: the effect of having a degree on whether a person had a child and, conditional on having at least one child, the effect of having a degree on whether at least one child acquired a degree. We find a strong and persistent negative effect of having a degree on the chances of having a child, but, among those who had a child, the possession of a degree had a large positive effect on the probability of that child also acquiring a degree. These two effects largely cancel out, and thus having a degree had a very small effect on the chances of having a child who also had a degree. One major advantage of adopting the prospective approach used here is that it helps to better answer questions concerning the intergenerational effects of changes in education.