Parental inputs and socio-economic gaps in early child development

Lindsey Macmillan () and Emma Tominey ()

No 20-04, CEPEO Working Paper Series from UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities

Abstract: By the time children start school, socio-economic gaps are evident in child skills. We document a causal effect of a reform to mothers' education on her child's skills and use mediation analysis to explore the role of parental inputs as mechanisms. The reform shifted mothers' education from no, to a low level of qualifications. Our results suggest that financial resources are an important channel, explaining up to 59% of the effect on child cognitive skills. On top of this, parental investments of health behaviours during pregnancy and monetary investments at home explain a further 14% of the test score gaps.

Keywords: Child development; test scores; socio-emotional skills; parental inputs; decomposition; ALSPAC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 63 pages
Date: 2020-01, Revised 2021-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-neu
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https://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeowp20-04r1.pdf Revised version, 2021 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Parental inputs and socio-economic gaps in early child development (2023)
Working Paper: Parental Inputs and Socio-economic Gaps in Early Child Development (2019)
Working Paper: Parental Inputs and Socio-Economic Gaps in Early Child Development (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucl:cepeow:20-04

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