About the data
The British Household Panel Survey is conducted annually, and has been since 1991, on a nationally representative sample of more than 5,000 households. Each year every adult (16 or older) within the sampled household is interviewed. Children aged between 11 and 15 answer a special 'Youth' questionnaire, joining the main sample when they turn 16.
How the data were used
The BHPS was used for a Ph.D. thesis on 'Parents, Children and Non-cognitive skills'. In one part of the research the sample used was composed of the children in the Youth Panel of BHPS for whom there is information about educational attainment and information on their parents. After identifying the parents, the relevant information about family background was retrieved from the mother's and/or father's individual questionnaires and matched to the children's sample.
The analysis focused on what parents do as opposed to who they are as a determinant of their offspring's educational attainment. Recent evidence has shown that non-cognitive skills such as personality traits play a role in the intergenerational transmission of income, and suggest that this relationship is mediated by education. The study looked at the effect of 'attitude towards learning' - a measure of non-cognitive ability that was constructed using insights from the Five Factor Model of Personality - on educational success. The following questions from the Youth Questionnaire were of interest: 'Intention of staying at school after 16', 'How much does it mean to do well at school', and 'How often do you play truant'.
Results of the research show that a negative attitude towards learning significantly lowers the propensity of getting high qualifications, and that having discipline at home helps children to develop a positive attitude towards learning. Not only child-specific practices - such as monitoring of homework - but also generic child-rearing practices - like establishing rules at home - are important for the academic success of the children.
About the author
Lara Patrício Tavares is a Research Fellow at the Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics at Bocconi University and an Assistant Professor at the Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas at the Technical University of Lisbon. Her research interests are population and family economics, intergenerational mobility and economics of education.
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