In low-income countries, girls tend to receive less education than boys (Behrman and Knowles, 1999; Alderman, Harold and King, Elizabeth M, 1998). In Sub-Saharan Africa, boys are still 1.6 times more likely to complete secondary education than their girl counterparts (Klugman et al., 2014). This is also in line with our observation in the sample countries in figures 1 and 2, women (mothers and daughters) show significantly fewer years of schooling than their men counterparts (fathers and sons) in all the countries. Accordingly, in column (2), we control for gender. We find that estimated intergenerational elasticity declined slightly in Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda, while it increased slightly in the Comoros and Tanzania, suggesting lower educational mobility or higher educational persistence among daughters than sons in most countries. The next set of results in column 3, table 2 includes other control variables that are used in the literature: age and number of children in a household. Moreover, with the objective of capturing the cohort effect, we also include the square of age. The results in column 3, table 2 show that the addition of the controls does not affect the estimated intergenerational elasticity in any significant way in the countries, though it leads to slight increase in the explanatory power of the regression. Despite the inclusion of such powerful controls, the qualitative results remain unchanged; parental education plays a vital role in children’s educational attainment in all the countries.

Table 2: Intergenerational education elasticity and correlation at the country level

|**Dependent variable: Children **|**Years of **<br>[|**Schooling**<br>1]|[2|]_†_|[3]_‡_||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||Coef.|Std. Err.|Coef.|Std. Err.|Coef.|Std. Err.|
|**Comoros**<br><sup>ˆ</sup>|||||||
|Parents Years of Schooling (_β_)<br>|0.906<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.055|0.909<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.053|0.833<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.049|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0.105||0.136||0.192||
|Correlation (ˆ_ρ_)|0.324<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>||||||
|# Observations|5,835||5,835||5,835||
|**Ghana**|||||||
|Parents Years of Schooling (<sup>ˆ</sup>_β_)<br>|0.489<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.007|0.484<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.006|0.490<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.007|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0.214||0.262||0.263||
|Correlation (ˆ_ρ_)|0.463<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>||||||
|# Observations|31,822||31,822||31,822||
|**Guinea**|||||||
|Parents Years of Schooling (<sup>ˆ</sup>_β_)|0.528<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.015|0.506<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.015|0.465<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.016|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0.139||0.200||0.221||
|Correlation (ˆ_ρ_)|0.372<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>||||||
|# Observations|22,052||22,052||22,052||
|**Madagascar**|||||||
|Parents Years of Schooling (<sup>ˆ</sup>_β_)|0.739<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.017|0.738<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.017|0.736<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.017|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0.258||0.262||0.263||
|Correlation (ˆ_ρ_)|0.508<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>||||||
|# Observations|20,736||20,736||20,736||
|**Malawi**|||||||
|Parents Years of Schooling (<sup>ˆ</sup>_β_)|0.637<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.009|0.630<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.009|0.567<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.010|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0.214||0.258||0.288||
|Correlation (ˆ_ρ_)|0.463<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>||||||
|# Observations|22,427||22,427||22,427||
|**Nigeria**|||||||
|Parents Years of Schooling (<sup>ˆ</sup>_β_)|0.768<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.012|0.758<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.012|0.703<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.123|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0.288||0.317||0.335||
|Correlation(ˆ_ρ_)|0.537<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>||||||
|# Observations<br>**Rwanda**|11,643||11,643||11,643||

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