Parental Occupation Outweighs Education in Predicting Teen PISA Scores, Israeli Study Finds

A new study from the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research reveals that the correlation between parents’ occupations and their children’s PISA scores is more than twice as strong as the link with parental education levels.

In practical terms, parental occupation explained over twice the variance in student scores compared to parental education.

Conducted by Shoresh researcher Ariela Savin, Vice President Prof. Ayal Kimhi, and President Prof. Dan Ben-David, the study analyzed data from 10,336 15-year-olds who completed Hebrew-language PISA assessments in 2012, 2015, 2018, and 2022, provided both parents were employed. The findings were released Thursday.

Students who took the Arabic-language tests were excluded due to discrepancies identified in prior research between student-reported parental education and official Central Bureau of Statistics records.

PISA, the OECD’s international student assessment, evaluates 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science. The researchers compared students’ average scores across these three domains with their parents’ occupations.

The analysis controlled for parental education, birthplace, gender, the number of books in the home, computer and internet access, and other household assets.

While the study identified a correlation between parental occupations and children’s scores, it did not establish causation. Notably, the analysis did not directly control for household income.

Fathers’ Occupations Linked to All Three Subjects; Mothers’ Strongest Link to Reading

Fathers’ occupations correlated with results across reading, mathematics, and science, whereas mothers’ occupations showed the strongest association with reading scores. This pattern reversed for parental education, where mothers’ education levels were more closely tied to achievement than fathers’.

To quantify occupational differences, researchers clustered parental jobs yielding similar student outcomes, then benchmarked other occupational groups against these reference clusters.

Given gender-based occupational segregation, distinct reference groups were established for mothers and fathers; these are analytical constructs and do not represent the average Israeli parent or student.

The fathers’ reference group comprised roles in sales, transportation, security, law enforcement, construction, and manufacturing.

Relative to the fathers’ reference group, children of fathers in university teaching, science, or research scored approximately 7.3% higher, while those with fathers in technology, information, or software scored roughly 6.8% higher.

These percentages reflect estimated inter-group differences adjusted for background factors, not raw PISA point gains.

Children of fathers in advanced engineering scored about 5% higher; those in finance, accounting, and economics scored 4.2% higher; and those in health and medicine scored 3.7% higher than the reference group.

The positive association extended beyond science and technology fields.

Children whose fathers held ‘general’ or ‘elementary’ roles, such as office management and mail sorting, scored approximately 5.4% higher than the reference group.

The mothers’ reference group included teaching, personal services, sales, clerical work, and cleaning.

Children of mothers in technology, information, or software scored roughly 6.8% higher. Technology was among the few sectors showing comparable effects for both parents.

Only two maternal occupational categories correlated with significantly lower scores: children of early-childhood educators scored about 4.6% lower, and those of teaching assistants scored 2.2% lower than the maternal reference group.

Researchers Urge Caution in Interpreting Results

The researchers stressed that these correlations do not imply causation; unmeasured family or occupational factors may drive the observed differences.

“Understanding a student’s starting point requires more than knowing parental education levels,” Kimhi stated. “Parents’ labor market position is also significantly associated with achievement.”

Children enter the education system from disparate starting points, and the system’s role is to weaken the link between family background and achievement. Without this, “it is difficult to speak of equal opportunity and intergenerational mobility,” he added.

“The next generation’s prospects for success remain anchored in their parents’ occupational standing,” Savin, Kimhi, and Ben-David concluded, underscoring the need for education systems that foster equal opportunity.

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