The impact of maternal care on child development: Evidence from sibling spillover effects of a parental leave expansion

Nagham Sayour

Labour Economics, 2019, vol. 58, issue C, 167-186

Abstract: Using a parental leave reform implemented in Canada at the end of 2000, I study the effects of an increase in maternal care on the developmental outcomes of children aged 2–3 years old. The reform increased the time mothers spent with their newborns by 3 months. Using the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, I employ a difference-in-differences methodology, where I compare children with a sibling born after the reform to those with a sibling born before the reform, relative to children of the same birth cohorts with no siblings born in the period surrounding the reform. Results show that treated children enjoy an increase of 3.6 h per week in the time they spend with their mothers, mainly due to a decrease in the time spent in non-institutional care. The increase in maternal care improves the emotional disorder score in the short-run and has no other impact on cognitive, non-cognitive or health outcomes in the short-run or the medium-run. Studying heterogeneous effects reveals a differential impact by child's age. An increase of 6.5 h per week in the time 2-year-olds spend with their mothers significantly improves their non-cognitive skills.

Keywords: Maternal care; Parental leave; Non-maternal care; Non-cognitive outcomes; Cognitive outcomes; Health outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J13 J18 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537118300204
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:labeco:v:58:y:2019:i:c:p:167-186

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2018.03.005

Access Statistics for this article

Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino

More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().