Family Types and Human Capital Development: How Family Values Affect Human Capital Decisions

Details

Supervisors

de la Croix, David

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences économiques, orientation générale

Abstract

This thesis is aimed at the investigation of the impact of the primary institutional form, that is family, on human capital accumulation. Following Emmanuel Todd’s classification of families into four macro groups in Western and Central Europe, this thesis analyses the family values of non-egalitarianism as well as authoritarianism and assesses their impact on human capital and consumption decisions within the household. What I find is that the investment in human capital of a generation has an inverse relation with the human capital decision of the next one, suggesting that the low efforts put in knowledge by a parent will have negative spillovers on his children. Secondly, the way in which inheritance is split among heirs plays an important role: what comes out from the analysis is that in a context of unequal inheritance customs, the relative bargaining power between agents shapes the decisions for investments in human capital. Thes results show indeed that family structure is a focal point to be analysed in order to understand deeply the persistence of economic divergences across Europe.