Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP14749
Authors: Kjell G. Salvanes; Emma Tominey; Cheti Nicoletti
Abstract: Increasing mothers’ labour supply in a child’s preschool years can cause a reductionin time investments that lead to a negative direct effect on mid-childhood and teenage outcomes.But as mothers’ work hours increase, income will rise. We ask whether income can compensate for thenegative effect of hours by adopting a novel mediation analysis that exploits exogenous variationin both mothers’ hours and family income in pre-school years. As expected we find a negative directeffect of an increase in mother’s work hours on child test scores at age 11 and 15. However, incomefully compensates for this negative direct effect. This is true for the full sample of children,for boys and girls and for children in households whose mother has a low and high level ofeducation.
Keywords: Child Development; Test Scores; Parental Investments
JEL Codes: I22; I24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Increasing mothers' work hours during preschool years (J22) | Decrease in child test scores at ages 11 and 15 (I21) |
| Household income (D19) | Compensation for the negative direct effect on child test scores (J33) |
| Increasing mothers' work hours during preschool years (J22) | Total effect on child outcomes is neutral (J13) |