The time-varying role of the family in student time use and achievement

Marie C Hull

doi:10.1186/s40172-017-0060-5

Abstract

In this paper, I use a unique dataset linking administrative school data with birth records to quantify the importance of time-varying family factors for child achievement and time use. Specifically, I take a model of academic achievement commonly used in the test score literature, and I augment it to include a family-year effect. Identification comes from the large number of sibling pairs observed in the same year. While prior literature has focused on specific shocks, such as job loss, I capture the full set of innovations that are shared across siblings in a given year. The distributions of fixed effects reveal that annual family innovations, relative to what was expected based on the previous year, are more important than teacher assignment for student achievement and also play a substantial role in the time students spend on homework, free reading, and television.JEL ClassificationI21, J13, J24

Highlights

Across disciplines, there is a long literature on the relationship between family background and educational outcomes
6 Conclusions While a growing literature examines the impact of specific events and input changes on student outcomes, this paper uses the co-movement of sibling error terms from the same year to quantify the total importance of the time-varying family environment
I find that this bundle of annual innovations plays a substantial role in student time use and achievement

Summary

Introduction

There is a long literature on the relationship between family background and educational outcomes. While many analyses focus on permanent family characteristics, there is a literature that examines the impact of various transitory ones. Studies of permanent family characteristics have examined both the share of the variation in an outcome that can be attributed to the family as well as the impact of specific family characteristics on outcomes. Results indicate that at least half of the variation in educational attainment and adult IQ is due to factors shared by siblings (Björklund and Salvanes 2011; Björklund and Jäntti 2012). This fraction is sizable, these shared factors include the family environment in addition to shared genes, neighborhoods, and schools. For this study, sibling correlations for adult outcomes fail to isolate the role

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