Parental education, child’s grade repetition and the modifier effect of cannabis use

Abstract

Previous research on the relationship among family socio-economic status (SES), cannabis use and educational attainment has concentrated on finding a causal pathway from SES and illicit drug use to educational achievement. However, the association between family background and a child’s cannabis use is weak. When analysing both family SES and education as determinants of a child’s educational attainment, cannabis use should be treated as an effect modifier rather than a confounder. This article examines how cannabis use alters the protective effect of better family education on a child’s school performance. By means of a retrospective cohort study using data from the Spanish National Survey on Drug Use in Secondary Education, this study illustrates that, as expected, children of better-educated parents are less likely to repeat a grade, although the positive impact of higher family education vanishes when students use cannabis.

Keywords:

• cannabis
• grade repetition
• schooling
• substance abuse

JEL Classification:

• I12
• I21

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Spanish Drug Observatory and the Delegation of the Spanish Government for the National Plan on Drugs for kindly providing microdata from the Spanish National Survey on Drug Use in Secondary Education.