Working Paper: NBER ID: w29394
Authors: John A. List; Julie Pernaudet; Dana Suskind
Abstract: Socioeconomic inequalities in child development crystallize at early stages, with associated disparities in parental investment in children. A key to understanding the data patterns is to document the sources underlying the observed inequalities. We first show that there are dramatic differences in parental beliefs across socioeconomic backgrounds (SES), with parents of higher SES being more likely to believe that parental investments impact child development. We then use two field experiments targeted to low-SES families to explore the mutability of such beliefs and their link to parental investments. In both cases, we find that parental beliefs about child development are malleable. The less intensive version of the program based on educational videos changes parental beliefs, but fails to lastingly increase parental investments and child outcomes. By contrast, in the more intensive version of our program combining home visits and feedback, the augmented beliefs are associated with enriched parent-child interactions and improved vocabulary, math, and social-emotional skills for the children. Together, these results suggest that changing parental beliefs can be an important pathway to raising parental investments and reducing socioeconomic gaps in children’s skills, but that simple informational policies may not be sufficient.
Keywords: Parental beliefs; Child development; Socioeconomic status; Field experiments; Investments in children
JEL Codes: C93; D83; I21; J13
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| socioeconomic status (SES) (I24) | parental beliefs (J13) |
| belief revision (D83) | parental investments (J13) |
| belief revision (D83) | child skills (J13) |
| home visiting program (I15) | parental beliefs (J13) |
| home visiting program (I15) | child outcomes (J13) |
| treatment (M53) | parental beliefs (J13) |
| parental beliefs (J13) | parental investments (J13) |
| parental beliefs (J13) | child outcomes (J13) |
| treatment (M53) | child outcomes (J13) |