Allocation of Parental Time and the Long-Term Effect on Children's Education

Abstract

This paper empirically and theoretically links parental time use decisions to child development in a household with two full-time employed parents. Both parents’ time spent on childcare is explicitly taken into account as well as childcare bought in the market. It is shown that the quality of market-provided childcare vs. the quality of parental childcare is crucial for parents’time use de- cisions but availability of paternal childcare does not directly a¤ect the mother’s childcare decision. The e¤ect of parental childcare time on children’s educa- tional outcome is tested using Danish time use data combined with administra- tive register data. I nd a statistically signi cant positive association between mothers’childcare time on weekdays and children’s outcomes as well as a pos- itive association between fathers’ childcare time on weekends and children’s outcomes. Parents’time spent on childcare is negatively related to the amount of time spent on paid work.