Early Maternal Time Investment and Early Child Outcomes

Bono, Emilia Del; Francesconi, Marco; Kelly, Yvonne; Sacker, Amanda

doi:10.1111/ecoj.12342

Cited by 189 publications

(163 citation statements)

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“…This literature finds that more involved parenting, including providing educational materials, enrolling students in activities, and spending time with children, is positively related to child test scores and cognitive development (Bodovski and Farkas, 2008;Greeman, Bodovski, and Reed, 2011;Del Boca et al, 2012;Carneiro and Rodriguez, 2009). These dynamics are evident in US data, and also in samples from Denmark (Thomsen, 2015), Australia (Fiorini and Keane, 2014), and the UK (Del Bono et al, 2014). While much of this research is observational, Price (2010) and Villena-Roldan and Rios-Aguilar (2012) instrument for parental time and also find positive effects on child cognitive test scores.…”

Section: Parenting and Child Wellbeingmentioning

confidence: 87%

Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments

2018

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Historic increases in income inequality have coincided with widening class divides in parental investments of money and time in children. These widening class gaps are significant because parental investment is one pathway by which advantage is transmitted across generations. Using over three decades of micro-data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the American Heritage Time Use Survey linked to state-year measures of income inequality, we test the relationship between income inequality and class gaps in parental investment. We find robust evidence of wider class gaps in parental financial investments in children—but not parental time investments in children—when state-level income inequality is higher. We explore mechanisms that may drive the relationship between rising income inequality and widening class gaps in parental financial investments in children. This relationship is partially explained by the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution in state-years with higher inequality, which gives higher-earning households more money to spend on financial investments in children. In addition, we find evidence for contextual effects of higher income inequality that reshape parental preferences toward financial investment in children differentially by class.

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Section: Parenting and Child Wellbeingmentioning

confidence: 87%

Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments

2018

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“…Many parenting practices including establishing regular family mealtimes, rules about television watching and computer use, and routines around homework and bedtimes have also been linked to a range of positive health and developmental outcomes for children (see Del Bono et al 2014;Ribar & Zapata 2014).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parenting Style as an Investment in Human Development

2016

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We take a new look at the role of parenting style and poverty in human development by conceptualizing parenting style as an investment that parents make in the development of their children. Unlike previous researchers, we capture the idea that the investments parents make in their children -including in parenting style -are not only costly in terms of the parents' time and money, but they are also demanding in terms of parents' attention. Thus, parents whose attention is diverted by other things will be less able to invest in their children and adolescents (e.g. to help them with school work, to read to them, to provide a good diet, to monitor their activities, etc.). Finally, we also consider the idea that poverty itself limits parent's attention.We see whether our conceptualization of parenting style, poverty, and child development is likely to be correct by looking at the relationship between parents' parenting style and the development and outcomes of their 18 year old children, captured in the Youth in Focus (YIF) Data. These data combine detailed Centrelink records with extensive survey information from both young people and their parents. We find broad support for our conceptualization of parenting style. In our data we can clearly disentangle parenting style from other more commonly researched aspects of parenting, such as the time and money parents invest in their children. Moreover, parenting style is related to poverty. In particular, poorer parents tend to monitor their young-adult children less than richer parents, even amongst parents that are comparable in other parental aspects of their investment in their children. Parenting style is also related to the young adults' personality development, their behavior, and their schooling outcomes even after accounting for other parental investments. This paper's main contribution is to formalize the complex relation between parenting, poverty, and children's development. Formally modelling the tradeoffs that parents make in raising their childrenas we have done here -is fundamental in the formation of social policy designed to generate better outcomes for disadvantaged children. Such policies are increasingly being enacted by governments across the world in the form of parenting interventions. Evaluations of parenting interventions, however, typically focus only on specific parenting behaviors (e.g. reading to children; monitoring; health care; helping with homework; providing routine; etc.) without considering their consequences for other parental investments. Understanding these tradeoffs is an essential first step in evaluating the overall impact of policies aimed at changing parents' behavior towards their children. Moreover, to the extent that poverty constrains parents' available attention, income transfers that move families out of poverty will not only increase parents' financial resources, but also permit parents to pay more attention into raising their children. The additional attention and financial resources are both expected to result in bett...

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“…In addition to studies regarding the income effect, a vast body of economic literature associates maternal labor supply during childhood with possible negative effects on child development and future opportunities (Baum, 2003;Ruhm, 2004;Bernal, 2008;Carneiro and Rodriguez, 2009;Bernal and Keane, 2011;Hsin and Felfe, 2014;Carneiro et al, 2015;Del Bono et al, 2016;Fort et al, 2017). As examples, according to Bernal and Keane (2011) each year of child care (versus maternal time input) before age 6 decreases test scores by 2.1 percent (0.11 standard deviations).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Money vs. Time: Family Income, Maternal Labor Supply, and Child Development

Agostinelli

Sorrenti

2018

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe study the effect of family income and maternal hours worked on child development. Our instrumental variable analysis suggests different results for cognitive and behavioral development. An additional $1,000 in family income improves cognitive development by 4.4 percent of a standard deviation but has no effect on behavioral development. A yearly increase of 100 work hours negatively affects both outcomes by approximately 6 percent of a standard deviation. The quality of parental investment matters and the substitution effect (less parental time) dominates the income effect (higher earnings) when the after-tax hourly wage is below $13.50. Results call for consideration of child care and minimum wage policies that foster both maternal employment and child development.JEL classification: H24, H31, I21, I38, J13, J22

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Early Maternal Time Investment and Early Child Outcomes

Cited by 189 publications

References 100 publications

Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments

Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments

Parenting Style as an Investment in Human Development

Money vs. Time: Family Income, Maternal Labor Supply, and Child Development

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