Time Investments In Children Research Articles

What Accounts for the Racial Gap in Time Allocation and Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital?

This paper estimates the impact of parents' time investment in young children, their socioeconomic status and family structure on long-term outcomes of children. We developed and estimated a model of dynastic households in which altruistic individuals choose fertility, labor supply, and time investment in children sequentially, using data on two generations from the PSID. Parental behavior affects the education outcomes of children, their labor market earnings, and also their marriage market outcomes. The dynastic framework provides a natural way to aggregate the outcomes of children as it is measured by their valuation function. Time allocation patterns differ by race, gender, education and family structure (number of children and marital status). Both the returns to parental time investment and the costs vary across these groups. On average black individuals invest less time with their children. Our estimation results show that despite the fact that the valuation function is higher for whites and the fact that conditional on education, blacks earn less than whites, on the margin, there are no significant race differences in the rate of returns to paternal time investment, and blacks have a higher return to maternal time investment than whites. The main reason for the lower parental time investment by blacks is the differences in family structure. There is a significantly higher proportion of black single mothers than white single mothers and the opportunity costs of time for single mothers are higher than the opportunity costs of married mothers due to income sharing and transfers within married households. We also find that the returns to maternal time investment are significantly higher for boys. This implies that mothers act in a compensatory manner, favoring low ability children in the family. Since girls already have a higher likelihood of achieving a high level of education than boys, mothers seem to invest more time in boys than in girls as the number of children increases. Our findings suggest a significant quality-quantity trade-off. The level of investment per child is smaller the larger the number of children, thus, this decline in the per-child investment is driven by the time constraint and the opportunity costs of time and not by the properties of the production function technology of children. We, also find that quality-quantity trade-off for blacks is significantly larger than that of whites. This is mainly due to the higher fertility of single black female and the resulting greater time constraint they face.

What Is The Source Of The Intergenerational Correlation In Earnings?

This paper uses a dynastic model of household behavior to estimate and decomposed the correlations in earnings across generations. The estimate model can explain 75% to 80 %of the observed correlation in lifetime earnings between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and families across generations. The main results are that the family and division of labor within the household are the main source of the correlation across generation and not just assorting mating. The interaction of human capital accumulation in labor market, the nonlinear return to part-time versus full-time work, and the return parental time investment in children are the main driving force behind the intergenerational correlation in earnings and assortative mating just magnify these forces.

Parental Time Investments in Children: The Role of Competition for University Places in the UK

We use novel diary surveys coupled with universities' administrative student data for the last three decades to document that increased competition for university places at elite institutions in the United Kingdom contributes to explain growing gaps in time investments between college and non-college educated parents. Competition for university places in the UK grew significantly during the 1980s and early 1990s, and gradually diminished afterwards. We find that the gap in time investments by college and non-college educated parents and their children widened up precisely during this first period, especially in terms of human capital enhancing activities.

Maternal employment and time investments in children

We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the American Time Use Survey to estimate the effect of maternal employment on time spent with children. We find that each additional 10 h of maternal work reduces mother–child quality time interaction by about 7.5 % and time reading together by 8 %. This relationship between work and quality time does not vary much based on mothers’ education and is robust to the inclusion of family or child fixed effects. There is no evidence that fathers or other relatives fill the gap in time investments due to maternal employment.

Time Investments in Children across Family Structures

This article compares time invested in children across family structures as a means to understand differences in children’s development. Using data from the 1997 Panel Study of Income Dynamics’ Child Development Supplement, we measure time investments from multiple caregivers and distinguish time children spend with a caregiver alone versus shared with another caregiver. We examine six family structures—married biological parents, cohabiting biological parents, mother and stepfather, mother and cohabiting boyfriend, single mother only, and multigenerational households. The total care-giving time that children receive in married biological parent families and cohabiting biological parent families is comparable to that for children living in stepfather families and multigenerational families. This is because children in stepfather families and multigenerational households receive substantial time investments from nonresident biological fathers and grandparents, respectively. In contrast, children receive little time investment from resident nonbiological father figures; and children in single mother, cohabiting boyfriend, and multigenerational households receive little time investment from their nonresident biological fathers. Finally, children who live with married biological parents receive the greatest share of caregiving time in the form of shared caregiving compared with children in all other family structures. Our findings suggest that having two resident biological caregivers predicts greater time investments in children and that shared parenting may be an important dimension of family structure.

Maternal Mental Health, Neighborhood Characteristics, and Time Investments in Children

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,572) to examine relationships between maternal depression and mothers' time investments with their 5-year-old children in outings, trips to playgrounds or parks, time spent reading with the child, and time spent playing indoors with the child. We also examine whether mothers' self-assessments of neighborhoods are associated with time investments in children. Findings indicate that persistent maternal depression is associated with fewer time investments in all four activities with 5-year-old children. Mothers' fear of children playing outdoors and self-assessments of neighborhood collective efficacy are associated with indoor and outdoor activities with children, but do not mediate the relationships between maternal depression and maternal time investments. In sum, maternal depression and neighborhood context play significant but largely independent roles in regulating mothers' time spent in primary child-care activities.

Cross-national Variation in the Influence of Employment Hours on Child Care Time

Parental time investments in children are essential inputs in children's present and future well-being. The ability of parents to make choices about child care time that are free from money and time constraints varies considerably, however, by employment status and country. We use nationally representative time diary data from nine countries with different gendered working time regimes to investigate how employment hours influence child care time, and whether parents in countries with high maternal employment rates, long work hours among mothers and fathers, and limited family policies have a deficit in child care time. We instead find that child care hours are lowest among French and Swedish mothers, and among French fathers, countries with relatively high parental employment rates but also short work hour cultures. We document a range of employment penalties on child care time among employed mothers and fathers in English-speaking countries and Slovenia, and smaller or no penalties among parents in the Netherlands and Nordic countries. Findings suggest employment associations with child care are not only mediated by gendered work hour cultures, but also culturally distinct parenting ideologies.

A Flying Start? Long Term Consequences of Maternal Time Investments in Children During Their First Year of Life

We study the impact of increasing the time that the mother spends with her child in the first year of her life. In particular, we examine a reform that increased paid and unpaid maternity leave entitlements in Norway. In response to this reform, maternal leave increased on average by 4 months and family income was unaffected. We find that this increase in maternal time with the child led to a 2.7 percentage points decline in high school dropout rates, going up to 5.2 percentage points for those whose mothers have less than 10 years of education. This effect is especially large for children of mothers who, in the absence of the reform, would take very low levels of unpaid leave. Finally, there is a weak impact on college attendance. The results also suggest that much of the impact of early time with the child is at low levels of maternal education.

A Flying Start? Long Term Consequences of Maternal Time Investments in Children During Their First Year of Life

We study the impact of increasing the time that the mother spends with her child in the first year of her life. In particular, we examine a reform that increased paid and unpaid maternity leave entitlements in Norway. In response to this reform, maternal leave increased on average by 4 months and family income was unaffected. We find that this increase in maternal time with the child led to a 2.7 percentage points decline in high school dropout rates, going up to 5.2 percentage points for those whose mothers have less than 10 years of education. This effect is especially large for children of mothers who, in the absence of the reform, would take very low levels of unpaid leave. Finally, there is a weak impact on college attendance. The results also suggest that much of the impact of early time with the child is at low levels of maternal education.

Fathers’ time investments in children: do sons get more?

This paper uses the 2003 American Time Use Survey to examine the effects of child gender on paternal time with children in married two-parent families. The results show that fathers of boys invest more time in children than those with only daughters and reduce their leisure time without children to do so. Boys get more of this time than girls in all-girl families and compared to their own sisters. Girls with brothers receive more of fathers’ time than girls with only sisters, but this is primarily in television watching, so whether this advantages them is open to question.

Increasing the length of parents' birth-related leave: The effect on children's long-term educational outcomes

Investments in children are generally seen as investments in the future economy. In this study I focus on time investments in children as I investigate the long-term educational effects on children of increasing parents' birth-related leave from 14 to 20 weeks using a natural experiment from 1984 in Denmark. The causal effect of the reform is identified using regression discontinuity design to compare a population sample of children born shortly before and shortly after the reform took effect. Results indicate that increasing parents' access to birth-related leave has no measurable effect on children's long-term educational outcomes. Mothers' incomes and career opportunities are slightly positively affected by the reform.

Are Parents Investing Less Time in Children? Trends in Selected Industrialized Countries

Trends in parental time invested in children since the 1960s are examined in 16 industrialized countries using time‐use survey data. Despite the time pressures that confront today's families, parents appear to be devoting more time to children than they did 40 years ago. Results also suggest that mothers continue to devote more time to childcare than fathers, but the gender gap has been reduced. The consistency of these results across countries suggests a global trend toward an increase in parental time investment in children. Multivariate analysis of trends in parental time by type of activity was undertaken for Canada. It revealed a significant increase in parental time even after controlling for changes in the demographic composition of the population during the past few decades.