Volume 24, Number 3 (Summer) 1989
Lentz, Bernard F. and David N. Laband. 1989. "Why So Many Children of Doctors Become Doctors: Nepotism vs. Human Capital Transfers." Journal of Human Resources 24(3):396-413.
In this paper we document a statistically significant, marginally greater probability of admittance into (at least one) medical school for children of doctors as compared to children of non-doctors. This fact can plausibly be explained as resulting from nepotism, in various forms, as well as from human capital transfers from first to (would-be) second generation doctors. After controlling for acquired human capital and other attributes of medical school applications, we cannot reject nepotism as a cause - children of doctors are nearly 14 percent more likely to be admitted into medical school than are comparable nonfollowers.
Bernard F. Lentz is an associate professor of economics at Ursinus College and David N. Laband is an associate professor of economics at Clemson University. Financial support for this research was provided by the Ursinus College Faculty Development Program. The authors would like to thank Jerry Hurley for his careful reading of the manuscript.
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