Does it pay to invest in the education of children?

The work described here sought to determine whether parents’ investment in the education of children in Poland has an impact on the wages of the latter in adulthood. To answer this question, an extended Mincer wage equation was estimated using OLS on the basis of data from the nationwide tracer survey of Polish graduates conducted in 2007. Analysis shows that parental investment in the education of children has a strong, positive impact on first earnings after the end of formal education. This relationship is to be observed when the investment is depicted with educational level of each parent, as well as when represented by the child’s participation in various extracurricular activities. Furthermore, if any of the above measures of parental investment is included in the equation, the wage premium from each level of formal education decreases. In particular, when both these measures of parental investments are included in the model, the tertiary education premium declines by about one quarter, while secondary vocational or general education are no longer significant determinants of the graduates’ wages (as compared with basic vocational education).