The Relation between Maternal Work Hours and Cognitive Outcomes of Young School-Aged Children

Annemarie Künn-Nelen, Andries de Grip and Didier Fouarge

No 7310, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper is the first that analyzes the relation between maternal work hours and the cognitive outcomes of young school-going children. When children attend school, the potential time working mothers miss out with their children, is smaller than when children do not yet attend school. At the same time, working might benefit children through, for example, greater family income. Our study is highly relevant for public policy as in most countries maternal employment rates rise when children enter school. We find no negative relation between maternal working hours and child outcomes as is often found for pre-school aged children. Instead, we find that children's sorting test score is higher when their mothers work part-time (girls) or full-time (boys). Furthermore, we find that planned parent-child activities are positively related to children's language test scores. Nevertheless, we do not find that a richer home environment in terms of the number of parent-child activities provided to the child explain the relation between maternal work hours and children's test scores.

Keywords: intergenerational human capital investments; maternal labor supply; (non)cognitive skills; home environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 J13 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2013-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: De Economist, 2015, 163 (2), 203-232

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7310.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The relation between maternal work hours and cognitive outcomes of young school-aged children (2013)
Working Paper: The relation between maternal work hours and cognitive outcomes of young school-aged children (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7310

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().