After independence in 1980 the new government of Zimbabwe implemented a substantial
educational reform to correct the inherited racially segregated system. A key
element of the reform was the elimination of the restriction to progress from primary
to secondary schools. Primary school leavers in 1980 entered secondary schools at a
rate 4 times higher than those leaving in 1979. We exploit this fuzzy discontinuity
design to test for the mother-to-child transmission of education. We find that a one
year increase in the mother’s education is associated with an increase in their children’s
schooling by 5 percent of a standard deviation. We show that our findings are unlikely
to be driven by other confounding factors.