The intergenerational transmission of preference and attitudes has been less investigated in the literature than
the intergenerational transmission of education and income. Using the Italian Time Use Survey (2002-2003)
conducted by ISTAT, we analyse the intergenerational transmission of reading habits: are children more
likely to allocate time to studying and reading when they observe their parents doing the same activity?
The intergeneration transmission of attitudes towards studying and reading can be explained by both cultural
and educational transmission from parents to children and by imitating behaviours. The latter channel is of
particular interest, since it entails a direct influence parents may have on child’s preference formation
through their role model, and it opens the scope for active policies aimed at promoting good parents’
behaviours. We follow two fundamental approaches to estimation: a “long run” model, consisting of OLS
intergenerational type regressions for the reading habit, and “short run” household fixed effect models,
where we aim at identifying the impact of the role model exerted by parents, exploiting different exposure of
sibling to parents’ example within the same household. Our long run results show that children are more
likely to read and study when they live with parents that are used to read. Mothers seems to be more
important than fathers in this type of intergenerational transmission. Moreover, the short run analysis shows
that there is a pure imitation effect: in the day of the survey children are more likely to read after they saw
their parents reading.
Presented by:
Chiara Monfardini (Department of Economics, University of Bologna)
Date & time:
July 20, 2011 12:00 pm
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