Beyond Time and Money: Parental Occupation and Early Childhood Development

Hyun Soo Suh

AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2026, vol. 116, 605-610

Abstract: This paper examines how parental occupation shapes early cognitive and noncognitive child development. Using the Millennium Cohort Study and the British Household Panel Survey, I document that parents allocate time in home production and market work differently across occupations. Estimating a system of simultaneous equations through three-stage least squares, I find that parental occupation is an important determinant of child skill formation beyond time and money: Maternal employment is associated with higher cognitive and noncognitive skills, while paternal self-employment is associated with higher noncognitive skills. Returns to parental time are higher among college-educated parents, consistent with skill-biased parenting.

JEL-codes: D13 J12 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20261122 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25323 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25324 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
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:aea:apandp:v:116:y:2026:p:605-610

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/subscribe.html

DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20261122

Access Statistics for this article

AEA Papers and Proceedings is currently edited by William Johnson and Kelly Markel

More articles in AEA Papers and Proceedings from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().