Parental Investments in Early Life and Child Outcomes. Evidence from Swedish Parental Leave Rules

Rita Ginja, Jenny Jans and Arizo Karimi

No 17/17, Working Papers in Economics from University of Bergen, Department of Economics

Abstract: We study how parental resources early in life affect children’s health and education exploiting the so-called speed premium (SP) in the Swedish parental leave system. The SP grants mothers higher parental leave benefits for the subsequent child without re-establishing eligibility through pre-birth market work if the two births occur within a pre-specified interval. This allow us to use a Regression Discontinuity framework. We find that the SP improves the educational outcomes of the first-born child, but not of the second-born. Impacts are driven by a combination of a positive income shock, and substitution from informal care to maternal time.

Keywords: Parental leave; earnings; time investments; child outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J18 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 71 pages
Date: 2017-10-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Parental Investments in Early Life and Child Outcomes: Evidence from Swedish Parental Leave Rules (2017)
Working Paper: Parental Investments in Early Life and Child Outcomes: Evidence from Swedish Parental Leave Rules (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:bergec:2017_017

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