We review the empirical literature that estimates the causal effect of parent’s schooling on child’s schooling, and conclude that estimates differ across studies. We then consider three explanations for why this is: (a) idiosyncratic differences in data sets; (b) differences in remaining...

This paper studies the evolution of school segregation in Sweden in the aftermath of the 1992 universal school voucher reform, which spurred the establishment of new independent voucher schools and introduced parental choice. The empirical analysis assesses the relative importance of...

We use unique Swedish data with information on adopted children's biological and adoptive parents to estimate intergenerational mobility associations in earnings and education. We argue that the impact from biological parents captures broad prebirth factors, including genes and prenatal...

We explore the adoption data approach to estimating causal effects of parental education and income on the same outcomes of their children. Thanks to a data set drawn from Swedish population registers with detailed information on biological background and history of adoptees, we can test basic...

We use unique Swedish data to estimate intergenerational associations between adoptees and their biological and adoptive parents. We argue that the impact from biological parents captures broad pre-birth factors, including genes and prenatal environment, and the impact from adoptive parents...

This paper provides new evidence on the role of the educational system for intergenerational mobility. I evaluate an educational reform, implemented in Sweden in the 1950s, which postponed ability tracking and extended compulsory education from seven to nine years. The reform may have influenced...

One of the remedies to selection bias in estimates of the labour market consequences of teenage motherhood has been to estimate within-family effects. A major critique, however, is that heterogeneity within the family might still bias the estimates. Using a large Swedish dataset on biological...

When studying different types of returns to education, educational reforms are commonly used in the economics literature as a source of exogenous variation in education. The Swedish compulsory school reform is one example; the reform extended compulsory education throughout the country, in...