Abstract
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.
Highlights
There is a well-documented socio-economic gap in the skills of children from an early age, in terms of both cognitive and socio-emotional skills.1 These early gaps widen across the child’s life and drive early adult outcomes including college attendance, crime and health.2 Recent work has shown that this gap in children’s early cognitive skills is, at least partly, causally driven by parental education
The control group of raising of the school leaving age (RoSLA) were individuals born before 1 September 1957, who were exposed to an education system with a compulsory minimum leaving age of 15 years
In this paper we have shown that at least part of this difference in early skill accumulation is causally driven by mothers’ education
Summary
There is a well-documented socio-economic gap in the skills of children from an early age, in terms of both cognitive and socio-emotional skills. These early gaps widen across the child’s life and drive early adult outcomes including college attendance, crime and health. Recent work has shown that this gap in children’s early cognitive skills is, at least partly, causally driven by parental education. There is a well-documented socio-economic gap in the skills of children from an early age, in terms of both cognitive and socio-emotional skills.. While the effect of parents’ education on the generations’ skills has been estimated, there is little evidence on the mechanisms through which increasing the education of parents may lead to higher skills in their children (Francesconi and Heckman, 2016). This is where we make a significant contribution to the literature, investigating the mechanisms for the causal effect of mothers’ education on children’s cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes during early schooling (up to age 7).. This is where we make a significant contribution to the literature, investigating the mechanisms for the causal effect of mothers’ education on children’s cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes during early schooling (up to age 7). Through analysing for the first time the causal pathways through which a reform to mother’s education impacts on child skills, we are able to offer a greater understanding of the benefits to increasing education
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