Sociologie et criminologie-Open Access
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The Role of Parental Cognitive Ability

Michael Klein

The social stratification literature is inconclusive about whether or not there is a direct impact of grandparent assets on grandchildren’s academic consequences internet of parental characteristics. Some of this heterogeneity may additionally be due to variations in unnoticed variable bias at the parental level. Our article debts for a greater substantial set of guardian traits and explores the mediating function of parental cognitive capacity in extra detail. It in addition tackles methodological challenges (treatment precipitated mediator–outcome confounders, treatment–mediator interaction) in assessing any direct influences of grandparents via the use of a regression-with-residuals approach. Using the 1970 British Cohort Study, our effects exhibit that the direct impact of grandparent training on grandchildren’s verbal and numerical potential is small and statistically non-significant. Parental cognitive capability on my own can account for extra than two-thirds (numerical ability) or 1/2 (verbal ability) of the typical grandparent effect. These findings stress the significance of cognitive capability for intergenerational social mobility processes.