Family Matters: Impacts of Family Background on Educational Attainments

The analysis uses new data matching parents and their young adult children to study the impact of family background on young people’s educational attainments. The data is derived from the first seven years (1991–97) of the British Household Panel Study. Parents’ educational attainments are found to be very strongly associated with their children’s educational attainments, and for an important part of the population these associations can be given a causal interpretation. In addition, young adults who experience single parenthood as children and those who come from families in the bottom income quartile have significantly lower educational attainments.