Family background, gender and cohort effects on schooling decisions

In this paper we use unique retrospective family background data from wave 13th of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to analyze the relevance of family background, in particular parental education - separated for fathers and mothers -, and gender on differential educational achievement. We find parents´ education attainments to be strong predictors of the education of their offspring. In particular, maternal education is the main determinant on the decision of whether stay-on beyond compulsory education. Our results are robust to the inclusion of a large set of control variables, including household income.