Parental inputs and socio-economic gaps in early child development

Lindsey Macmillan, Emma Tominey

By the time children start school, socio-economic gaps are evident in child skills. We document a causal effect of a reform to mothers' education on her child's skills and use mediation analysis to explore the role of parental inputs as mechanisms. The reform shifted mothers' education from no, to a low level of qualifications. Our results suggest that financial resources are an important channel, explaining up to 59% of the effect on child cognitive skills. On top of this, parental investments of health behaviours during pregnancy and monetary investments at home explain a further 14% of the test score gaps.

MoreLess

Year of publication:	November 2019
Authors:	Macmillan, Lindsey ; Tominey, Emma
Publisher:	Bonn, Germany : IZA - Institute of Labor Economics
Subject:	child development \| test scores \| socio-emotional skills \| parental inputs \| decomposition \| ALSPAC \| Kinder \| Children \| Eltern \| Parents \| Kognition \| Cognition \| Bildungsniveau \| Educational achievement \| Humankapital \| Human capital \| Bildungsinvestition \| Human capital investment \| Kinderbetreuung \| Child care \| Dekompositionsverfahren \| Decomposition method