Abstract
Human capital formation literature states that an individual’s educational attainment is primarily determined by parental education and other socioeconomic characteristics. In Mexico, during the last 20 years, mothers’ education and labor market participation have increased considerably. These changes have impacted different aspects of family organization, such as children’s educational attention. Most studies on intergenerational educational transmission focus on how the educational attainment of the mother or father impacts their children’s educational attainment. However, few studies consider the employment situation of the mother. This paper aims to analyze the combined effect of the mother’s educational level and employment status on the educational attainment of her children. We estimate the probabilities of completing each school year through a duration model, including an analysis by sex. Our results show that the mother’s employment status is positively related to the probability of staying at school, but only for sons. However, when the mother works, the educational attainment gap between daughters and sons narrows. Furthermore, for higher-educated mothers, their employment status is positively related to the probability of their daughters staying at school. Our results indicate that the impact of mothers’ socioeconomic characteristics on their children’s educational future is greater for daughters than sons.
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Data availability
The data used in the article are generated by the Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias, which are freely available at https://ceey.org.mx/contenido/que-hacemos/emovi/
Code availability
The authors can provide the code upon request.
Notes
To determine maternal employment status, we use the EMOVI-2017 question, “When you were 14 years old, did your mother work?”. We consider that the mother worked if the child answered any of the following answers: (a) she worked, (b) she helped a family or non-family business, (c) she sold some product or (d) she carried out any other type of activity in exchange for money.
The five regions are north, northwest, central north, center, and south of Mexico. The details of the regionalization of the database can be consulted in the following link https://ceey.org.mx/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Nota-sobre-la-regionalizaci%C3%B3n-ESRU-EMOVI-2017.pdf
The unexpanded sample presents this difference by gender, possibly because it is a survey conducted in households where women are more likely to be found.
The Index of Socioeconomic Level is a variable included in the EMOVI database and is used as a proxy for wealth of origin. It was calculated by means of a multicomponent analysis based on the goods and services of the household of origin. It has zero mean, a standard deviation of 0.97, and takes values from − 1.25 to 3.42. The index of socioeconomic level is also divided in five socioeconomic strata using the following formula: \(\frac{index value -mean index}{standard deviation index}\). 22.2% of the observations belong to the lowest stratum, 19.7% to the medium–low stratum, 21.4% to the middle stratum, 19.3% to the medium–high stratum, and 17.3% to the upper stratum. For more details see https://ceey.org.mx/contenido/que-hacemos/emovi/
We included a dummy variable for technical education. However, results were not statistically significant.
The country is divided into 5 regions: north, northwest, north-central, central, and south.
The probability is computed as follows: \((1 - \lambda )\times 100\%\).
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All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Conceptualization and Methodology: BNC-M, EA-T; Analysis and formal research, writing-preparation of the original draft: BNC-M. Writing-revision and edition: EA-T. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Chacón-Montoya, B.N., Aguayo-Téllez, E. Effect of maternal education and employment on children’s educational attainment in Mexico. SN Soc Sci 3, 171 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-023-00758-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-023-00758-9