The effect of maternal education on children's academic performance

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of maternal education on children's academic outcomes, particularly their grade repetition. Using time fixed effect analyses with data from the French Labor Force Survey (LFS); we find a negative and significant association between maternal education and children's grade repetition. On average, one more year of maternal education decreases the probability of children's grade repetition by 0.8 percentage points. We show that our results are robust by including a set of possible control variables. Plausible mechanisms that explain the maternal education-child academic outcome association provide more convincing evidence that the relationship between maternal education and children’s grade repetition is negative.