RESEARCH ARTICLE Assessing the Independent Contribution of Maternal Educational Expectations to Children’s Educational Attainment in Early Adulthood: A Propensity Score Matching Analysis

Background Parental educational expectations have been associated with children’s educational attain-ment in a number of long-term longitudinal studies, but whether this relationship is causal has long been debated. The aims of this prospective study were twofold: 1) test whether low maternal educational expectations contributed to failure to graduate from high school; and 2) compare the results obtained using different strategies for accounting for confounding variables (i.e. multivariate regression and propensity score matching). Methodology/Principal Findings The study sample included 1,279 participants from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Kin-dergarten Children. Maternal educational expectations were assessed when the partici-pants were aged 12 years. High school graduation –measuring educational attainment – was determined through the Quebec Ministry of Education when the participants were aged 22–23 years. Findings show that when using the most common statistical approach (i.e. multivariate regressions to adjust for a restricted set of potential confounders) the contribu