Sex Differences in Intergenerational Income Transmission and Educational Attainment: Testing the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis

Autor(en)

Katharina Pink, Anna Schaman, Martin Fieder

Abstrakt

From an evolutionary point of view, sex differences in intergenerational transmission of income may be influenced by the Trivers-Willard (T-W) effect: Low status parents should invest more in daughters, whereas high status parents are expected to invest more in sons. This bias in parental investment may result in status-dependent sex biased parental support for higher education and educational attainment and should therefore affect the level of intergenerational income transmission for the sons and daughters. We used the data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) to model the effect of parental financial investment on the child’s income and educational attainment controlling for the number of siblings. The observed sex differences in intergenerational income transmission demonstrate that sons profited more from parental income and education in terms of their own income than daughters. Furthermore, we showed that fathers with a high socioeconomic index (SEI) invest more in their sons’ education in terms of completed years of education and financial support during college. In contrast daughters of low SEI fathers completed more years of education and received more financial support than sons of low SEI fathers. However, the pattern in intergenerational income transmission might be better explained as a product of sociological factors and reproductive trade-offs in later life rather than as a consequence of the T-W effect.

Organisation(en)

Department für Evolutionäre Anthropologie

Externe Organisation(en)

Universität Wien, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Journal

Frontiers in Psychology

Band

8

Anzahl der Seiten

8

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01879

Publikationsdatum

11-2017

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

106056 Biologische Anthropologie

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Psychology(all)

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/sex-differences-in-intergenerational-income-transmission-and-educational-attainment-testing-the-triverswillard-hypothesis(f545db67-08de-4556-ab77-9978b3a4e888).html