This paper investigates the causal relationship between parental education and children's education using a unique dataset from Norway. The authors find little evidence of a causal link between parents' education and children's education, despite significant OLS relationships. They find that the only statistically significant effect is a positive relationship between mother's education and son's education. These findings suggest that the high correlations between parents' and children's education are due primarily to family characteristics and inherited ability, not education spillovers. The study uses a reform of the education system in the 1960s as an instrument for parental education, allowing for the identification of the impact of increasing parental education on children's schooling decisions. The results indicate that the reform provides variation in parental education that is exogenous to parental ability, enabling the determination of the impact of increasing parental education on children's schooling decisions. The study finds that the reform had a large and significant impact on educational attainment, leading to a significant increase in earnings. The paper concludes that intergenerational spillovers may not be a compelling argument for subsidizing education, although the study focuses on an education reform that increased education at the bottom tail of the distribution. The results suggest that higher education may reduce the cost of education for the child in terms of effort.This paper investigates the causal relationship between parental education and children's education using a unique dataset from Norway. The authors find little evidence of a causal link between parents' education and children's education, despite significant OLS relationships. They find that the only statistically significant effect is a positive relationship between mother's education and son's education. These findings suggest that the high correlations between parents' and children's education are due primarily to family characteristics and inherited ability, not education spillovers. The study uses a reform of the education system in the 1960s as an instrument for parental education, allowing for the identification of the impact of increasing parental education on children's schooling decisions. The results indicate that the reform provides variation in parental education that is exogenous to parental ability, enabling the determination of the impact of increasing parental education on children's schooling decisions. The study finds that the reform had a large and significant impact on educational attainment, leading to a significant increase in earnings. The paper concludes that intergenerational spillovers may not be a compelling argument for subsidizing education, although the study focuses on an education reform that increased education at the bottom tail of the distribution. The results suggest that higher education may reduce the cost of education for the child in terms of effort.