Intergenerational transmission of human capital what makes and breaks cycle of advantage and disadvantage

For this study, researchers used Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) data to investigate intergenerational transmission of human capital by looking at the relationship between mothers’ educational attainment and children’s cognitive skills (vocabulary, reading and overall cognitive skills at 8 years of age).

Key findings identify that:

• mothers’ education is strongly linked to children’s cognitive skills – the higher the mothers’ educational attainment, the better children’s cognitive skills are, on average
• mothers with more education appear to boost their children’s cognitive skills by reading to them frequently in the preschool years and having many books in the home
• children also tend to have better cognitive skills if their mother took folic acid supplementation during pregnancy and tend to have worse cognitive skills if they were born to a sole-parent mother living in a socio-economically deprived neighbourhood and are exposed to a lot of television in infancy
• children of lower-educated mothers have better chances of developing strong cognitive skills (i.e., better chances of breaking the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage) if their mother is relatively sparing with warmth and responsiveness in her parenting (an unexpected finding that may reflect the detrimental effects of ‘over-parenting’ or ‘helicopter parenting’ on children’s development).
• children of lower-educated mothers are less likely to break the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage if they are born to a sole-parent mother living in a deprived neighbourhood whose parenting is verbally and physically hostile or highly diffident and inconsistent