The Origin of Cultural Tastes and Consumption: Genes, Environments, and Experiences

This talk focuses on how family background shapes cultural tastes and consumption. Although children from advantaged backgrounds are more culturally active than those from disadvantaged backgrounds (and also more likely to engage in diverse and "highbrow" activities), we know little about how the intergenerational transmission of cultural tastes and behaviors operates. I present results from a project in which we use data on Danish twins (and non-twin siblings) to analyze the role of factors inside the family (shared genes and environments) and outside the family in explaining variation in cultural tastes and consumption. Preliminary results show that (a) shared genetic factors explain a larger share of the variation in cultural tastes and consumption than shared environmental factors; (b) shared environmental factors matter more for cultural tastes than for cultural consumption; and (c) results are similar when we also include information on non-twin siblings.