CHE Seminar Series: Mother nature, mother nurture - Intergenerational persistence in two-mother families
Why do children of more educated mothers tend to do better in education themselves? We propose a novel strategy to answer this question using unique data from the Netherlands. By comparing donor-conceived children raised in two-mother families, we disentangle the influences of biological and social motherhood. We find that children's test scores are more strongly associated with the education of their biological mother than that of their co-mother. Strikingly, even within the same family (where children are raised by the same two mothers), those with the more educated biological mother perform substantially better. These estimates capture the combined effects of genetic endowments, in-utero conditions, and early mother–child interactions. We find no evidence that children of more educated mothers are healthier at birth, and only limited evidence that they receive greater maternal investments in early childhood. Taken together, our results point to a prominent role for education-related heritable factors in explaining intergenerational persistence.
Speaker profile
Sander de Vries is an economist whose research focuses on economic inequality, intergenerational mobility, and the economics of education. He uses large administrative datasets together with causal inference and machine learning methods to study these topics. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, where he contributes to the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility: Measuring What Matters and Why, alongside Peter Siminski, Nathan Deutscher, Roger Wilkins, and Bhaskar Mazumder.
Weekly seminar series
As part of our Centre's vibrant research culture, we host a weekly seminar series. Visiting and invited researchers present current research relating to the economics of health and wellbeing, and the healthcare sector. Visitors are welcome to join these sessions where discussion and debate is encouraged.
For further information on our seminar series, please contact Trong-Anh.Trinh@monash.edu
Event Details
- Date:
- 26 August 2026 at 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
- Venue:
- Caulfield campus, Building H, level 9, room H9.21
- Categories:
- CHE Seminar; General
Description
Why do children of more educated mothers tend to do better in education themselves? We propose a novel strategy to answer this question using unique data from the Netherlands. By comparing donor-conceived children raised in two-mother families, we disentangle the influences of biological and social motherhood. We find that children's test scores are more strongly associated with the education of their biological mother than that of their co-mother. Strikingly, even within the same family (where children are raised by the same two mothers), those with the more educated biological mother perform substantially better. These estimates capture the combined effects of genetic endowments, in-utero conditions, and early mother–child interactions. We find no evidence that children of more educated mothers are healthier at birth, and only limited evidence that they receive greater maternal investments in early childhood. Taken together, our results point to a prominent role for education-related heritable factors in explaining intergenerational persistence.
Speaker profile
Sander de Vries is an economist whose research focuses on economic inequality, intergenerational mobility, and the economics of education. He uses large administrative datasets together with causal inference and machine learning methods to study these topics. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, where he contributes to the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility: Measuring What Matters and Why, alongside Peter Siminski, Nathan Deutscher, Roger Wilkins, and Bhaskar Mazumder.
Weekly seminar series
As part of our Centre's vibrant research culture, we host a weekly seminar series. Visiting and invited researchers present current research relating to the economics of health and wellbeing, and the healthcare sector. Visitors are welcome to join these sessions where discussion and debate is encouraged.
For further information on our seminar series, please contact Trong-Anh.Trinh@monash.edu