Working Paper: NBER ID: w19364
Authors: Rachel Dunifon; Anne Toft Hansen; Sean Nicholson; Lisbeth Palmhj Nielsen
Abstract: Using a Danish data set that follows 135,000 Danish children from birth through 9th grade, we examine the effect of maternal employment during a child's first three and first 15 years on that child's grade point average in 9th grade. We address the endogeneity of employment by including a rich set of household control variables, instrumenting for employment with the gender- and education-specific local unemployment rate, and by including maternal fixed effects. We find that maternal employment has a positive effect on children's academic performance in all specifications, particularly when women work part-time. This is in contrast with the larger literature on maternal employment, much of which takes place in other contexts, and which finds no or a small negative effect of maternal employment on children's cognitive development and academic performance.
Keywords: maternal employment; children's academic performance; Danish data; endogeneity; GPA
JEL Codes: J13; J22
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Maternal employment (J22) | Child academic performance (I21) |
| Maternal employment during first three years (J22) | Child GPA (I24) |
| Maternal employment intensity (J22) | Child GPA (I24) |
| Maternal employment (J22) | Maternal income (J12) |
| Maternal income (J12) | Child academic performance (I21) |