4 ms·

The math is trickier than that: - If 4% of parents have degrees, something like 7% of the next generation has at least one parent with a degree. Because child

The math is trickier than that: - If 4% of parents have degrees, something like 7% of the next generation has at least one parent with a degree. Because children have two parents, and only one of those two parents needs to have a degree. So the correct number to compare 20% against is ~7%, not 4%. - Suppose a child of a degree-holder is 3 times as likely to become an economics PhD as a child of no degree-holders. Then, if 7% of children have a degree-holding parent, you would expect (7 * 3) / (7 * 3 + 93) = 21 / 114 = ~18.4% of economics PhDs to have a degree-holding parent, not 21%. If 25% of children have a degree-holding parent, you'd expect (25 * 3) / (25 * 3 + 75) = 75 / 150 = 50% of economics PhDs to have a degree-holding parent, not 75%. Eyeballing the last few numbers, it does look like the value of having a degree-holding parent may have increased significantly, from a ~3.3x multiplier to almost 6x. But the error bars on this back-of-the-napkin analysis are pretty wide.

robocat 4y ago
> If 4% of parents have degrees, something like 7% of the next generation has at least one parent with a degree. Are you presuming marriage and degree-holding are independent variables? Although I presume there are fewer female degree holders, so perhaps it makes little difference.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  >Although I presume there are fewer female degree holders, so perhaps it makes little difference. Since ~80s there are more female undergraduate students than male. EDIT: with graduate degrees it got equal just in 2005. Which is relatively close to the age of current students... https://www.statista.com/statistics/185167/number-of-doctoral-degrees-by-gender-since-1950/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/185167/number-of-doctora...
- chrchang523 4y ago
  “Something like 7%” is noticeably less than twice 4%, so no, I didn’t make that assumption. (I also explicitly stated that this was a back-of-the-napkin-quality analysis.)
  - V-2 4y ago
    It is noticeably closer to 8% than to 4% though. 7% would imply graduates exhibit a rather strong preference for marrying non-graduates over other graduates, which I find hard to believe.
    - chrchang523 4y ago
      At a time when only 4% of the population had graduate degrees, if 25% of married grad-degree-holders were married to another grad-degree-holder, that would constitute a large preference in favor of other graduates.
- deleted 4y ago
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robocat 4y ago

> If 4% of parents have degrees, something like 7% of the next generation has at least one parent with a degree. Are you presuming marriage and degree-holding are independent variables? Although I presume there are fewer female degree holders, so perhaps it makes little difference.

KptMarchewa 4y ago
>Although I presume there are fewer female degree holders, so perhaps it makes little difference. Since ~80s there are more female undergraduate students than male. EDIT: with graduate degrees it got equal just in 2005. Which is relatively close to the age of current students... https://www.statista.com/statistics/185167/number-of-doctoral-degrees-by-gender-since-1950/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/185167/number-of-doctora...
chrchang523 4y ago
“Something like 7%” is noticeably less than twice 4%, so no, I didn’t make that assumption. (I also explicitly stated that this was a back-of-the-napkin-quality analysis.)
- V-2 4y ago
  It is noticeably closer to 8% than to 4% though. 7% would imply graduates exhibit a rather strong preference for marrying non-graduates over other graduates, which I find hard to believe.
  - chrchang523 4y ago
    At a time when only 4% of the population had graduate degrees, if 25% of married grad-degree-holders were married to another grad-degree-holder, that would constitute a large preference in favor of other graduates.
deleted 4y ago
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