The Impact Of Parents' Education On Their Expectation Of Children's Educational Attainment

In this paper,we study the intergenerational transmission of education from the perspective that parents' educational level will affect their perception and willingness to invest in their children's education,thus affecting their children's educational expectations and ultimately the educational level of their offspring.We use China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)data in 2010,2014 and 2016.We use two different dependent variables to measure parents' expectations for their children's education.One is whether parents are willing to send their children abroad to study.The other is whether parents' expectations for their children's highest educational level are university or above.Based on OLS,Probit estimates,we use spouse's educational level as an instrument variable to work out the results.The results show that there is a positive and significant relationship between parents' education and their expectations for children's education.The higher the educational level of parents,the stronger their willingness to send their children abroad to study.The higher the educational level of parents,the higher their expectations for their children's education.Parents' expectations for their children's education affect the ways of taking education and thus have an impact on their children's final education.At the same time,we find that although both of father's education and mother's education will affect their expectations for their children,the gender differences between father and mother do exist.Compared with father,mother has a greater impact on children's future education.