NOVA Notat 7/09

This paper investigates the relationship between parents’ socioeconomic status and their children’s performance at school. Proxies used for parents’ socioeconomic status are their educational level, employment and cultural background; and for children’s educational attainment, their grades in Norwegian, maths and English. The data were collected in the second round of the longitudinal project ‘Children’s level of living - the impact of family incomes". A case sample was composed of children in families who lived below the poverty line in 2000, while a control group comprised all categories in the community in the same year. The poverty threshold was defined as 60 per cent of the median income. The analysis methods used are cross tabulation, tests of population proportions and regression. Parental education level and children’s academic performance correlate positively but moderate.