Does Cultural Capital Really Affect Academic Achievement? New Evidence from Combined Sibling and Panel Data
This paper provides new estimates of the causal effect of cultural capital on academic achievement. I use a difference-in-difference design which addresses the problem of omitted variable bias which has led to too optimistic estimates of the effect of cultural capital on educational success in previous research. After controlling for family and individual fixed effects, I find that (1) cultural capital (measured by indicators of participation in cultural activities, reading climate, and extracurricular activities) has a positive effect on children’s reading and math test scores; (2) the effect of cultural capital is generally smaller than previously reported; and (3) the effect of cultural capital varies across different SES groupings. My results also suggest that the effect of cultural capital on academic achievement varies in low-SES and high-SES environments