Mother’s Time Allocation, Child Care and Child Cognitive Development

Ylenia Brilli

No 695, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper analyzes the effects of maternal employment and non-parental child care on child cognitive development, taking into account the mother's time allocation between leisure and child-care time. I estimate a behavioral model, in which maternal labor supply, non-parental child care and time allocation decisions are considered to be endogenous choices of the mother, and the child cognitive development depends on maternal and non-parental child care. The results show that the mother's child-care time is more productive than non-parental child care, at any age of the child. This implies that a reduction in a mother's child-care time, induced by a higher labor supply, may not be compensated for by the increase in non-parental child care use, and, hence, may lead to a negative effect on the child's cognitive ability. The estimation of a counterfactual model where a mother can only allocate her time between child care and work shows that neglecting the mother's time allocation choice between child care and leisure overestimates the productivity of a mother's time with the child.

Keywords: mother employment; mother time allocation; non-parental child care; child development; structural estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C15 D13 J13 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2017-02-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-lma and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Mother's Time Allocation, Child Care and Child Cognitive Development (2017)
Working Paper: Mother's Time Allocation, Child Care and Child Cognitive Development (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0695

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