This paper examines the relationship between parents’ and children's language skills for a nationally representative birth cohort born in the United Kingdom—the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). We investigate both socioeconomic and ethnic differentials in children's vocabulary scores and the role of differences in parents’ vocabulary scores in accounting for these. We find large vocabulary gaps between highly educated and less educated parents, and between ethnic groups. Nevertheless, socioeconomic and ethnic gaps in vocabulary scores are far wider among the parents than among their children. Parental vocabulary is a powerful mediator of inequalities in offspring's vocabulary scores at age 14, and also a powerful driver of change in language skills between the ages of five and 14. Once we account for parental vocabulary, no ethnic minority group of young people has a negative “vocabulary gap” compared to whites.

中文翻译：

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语言技能的代际传递

本文研究了在英国出生的具有全国代表性的出生队列——千年队列研究 (MCS) 中父母和孩子的语言技能之间的关系。我们调查了儿童词汇分数的社会经济和种族差异，以及父母词汇分数差异在解释这些方面的作用。我们发现受过高等教育和受教育程度较低的父母之间以及种族之间存在巨大的词汇差距。然而，父母在词汇分数方面的社会经济和种族差异远大于他们的孩子。父母的词汇是后代 14 岁时词汇分数不平等的强大中介，也是 5 至 14 岁之间语言技能变化的强大驱动力。 一旦我们考虑了父母的词汇，