When unpacking broad education levels into more detailed educational attainment categories, as suggested by Schneider (2010), important cross-country differences but also previously hidden similarities may emerge.
On the one hand, because they are homogeneous with respect to ethnicity, spouses might differ more in educational attainment than intermarried couples and thus specialize more.
Women in the study sample were younger (29 vs 31 years), had higher levels of education (27.2% vs 21.5% with 17 years or more of educational attainment), fewer who smoked cigarettes in pregnancy (6.9% vs 9.6%) and fewer with high consumption of organic vegetables (6.9% vs 7.7%).
"I think we have become more meritocratic — educational attainment has become increasingly predictive of economic success," Professor Becker said.
Given the high degree of educational differentiation in most countries, we do this using a more differentiated educational attainment variable than what is commonly used.
Therefore, before jumping to conclusions about differences in the quality and academic selectivity of education across countries, it is important to describe 'net' skill differences by disaggregated, cross-nationally more comparable educational attainment categories than has so far been done.
Further analysis across strata revealed a trend across zygosity, with identical twins demonstrating more similar educational attainment levels than did their fraternal twin counterparts, suggesting a genetic influence.
Compared with the US population, the study sample contained more women, more white and fewer black individuals, more individuals with high educational attainment, more middle-income-level individuals, and fewer individuals who identified as religious.
Long term, nothing is likely to matter more than improving educational attainment, from preschool through college (which may have started already).
More specifically, parental educational attainment was measured using an indicator or whether at least one parent earned a college degree.
