We study the intergenerational effect of birth order on educational attainment using rich data from different European countries included in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The survey allows us to link two or more generations in different countries. We use reduced-form models linking children’s education to parents’ education, controlling for a large number of characteristics measured at different points in time. We find that not only are parents who are themselves firstborns better educated, on average, but they also have more-educated children compared with laterborn parents (intergenerational effect). Results are stronger for mothers than for fathers, and for daughters than for sons. In terms of heterogeneous effects, we find that girls born to firstborn mothers have higher educational attainment than girls born to laterborn mothers. We do not find evidence for potential channels other than parental education that could explain the intergenerational effect of parental birth order.

我们使用欧洲健康，老龄化与退休调查（SHARE）中包含的来自不同欧洲国家的丰富数据，研究了出生顺序对教育水平的代际影响。通过调查，我们可以将不同国家的两代或更多代人联系起来。我们使用简化形式的模型将儿童的教育与父母的教育联系起来，控制在不同时间点测得的大量特征。我们发现，不仅自己作为长子的父母的平均教育水平更高，而且与后辈的父母相比，他们的孩子的教育程度更高（代际效应）。母亲的结果胜于父亲，女儿的结果胜于儿子。就异构效应而言，我们发现，长子母亲所生的女孩比后辈母亲所生的女孩受教育程度更高。除了父母教育以外，我们没有找到其他可能解释父母生育顺序的代际效应的证据。