TY  - JOUR
AU  - Black,Sandra E.
AU  - Devereux,Paul J.
AU  - Salvanes,Kjell G.
TI  - Like Father, Like Son? A Note on the Intergenerational Transmission of IQ Scores
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14274
PY  - 2008
Y2  - August 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14274
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14274.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Sandra Black
Department of Economics
 University of Texas
Austin, TX  78712
Tel: 512-475-8519
E-Mail: sblack@austin.utexas.edu

Paul J. Devereux
School of Economics
and Geary Institute
University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin 4
Ireland
E-Mail: devereux@ucd.ie

Kjell Salvanes
Department of Economics
Norwegian School of Economics & Business
Hellev. 30, N-5035 Bergen, NORWAY
IZA and CEP
E-Mail: kjell.salvanes@nhh.no
AB  - More able parents tend to have more able children. While few would question the validity of this statement, there is little large-scale evidence on the intergenerational transmission of IQ scores.  Using a larger and more comprehensive dataset than previous work, we are able to estimate the intergenerational correlation in IQ scores, examining not just average correlations but also how this relationship varies for different subpopulations.  We find that there is substantial intergenerational transmission of IQ scores; an increase in father's IQ at age 18 of 10% is associated with a 3.2% increase in son's IQ at the same age.  This relationship holds true no matter how we break the data.  This effect is much larger than our estimated elasticity of intergenerational transmission of income of approximately .2.
ER  -