1 Family Background and Gender Differences in Educational Expectations

Socioeconomic outcomes of parents and their children are strongly correlated, but more so for sons than daughters. Using a unique data set from Denmark, I assess whether these gender differences result from different transmission mechanisms by separating the effects of parental education and income. I find that educational expectations of daughters are closely related to their mothers ’ education and expectations of sons to their fathers’. Parental income, however, is positively related to educational expectations only for sons