Do Maternal Investments in Human Capital Affect Children's Academic Achievement?

Quinn Moore and Lucie Schmidt ()

Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, Williams College

Abstract: Children of educated mothers fare better on a variety of educational outcomes. However, little research has been done on the effects of human capital investments undertaken by mothers with children at home. Such investments have a theoretically ambiguous effect on child outcomes, since human capital investment reduces time spent with children but may have positive spillover effects on child investment. Using child- and sibling-fixed effects models to deal with unobserved heterogeneity, we find that cumulative maternal schooling undertaken during a child's lifetime has significant positive effects on child outcomes, and that negative time allocation effects are minimal.

Keywords: Maternal education; child development; female employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-05
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