Could trends in time children spend with parents help explain the black–white gap in human capital? Evidence from the American Time Use Survey

Richard Patterson

Education Economics, 2017, vol. 25, issue 3, 219-233

Abstract: It is widely believed that the time children spend with parents significantly impacts human capital formation. If time varies significantly between black and white children, this may help explain the large racial gap in test scores and wages. In this study, I use data from the American Time Use Survey to examine the patterns in the time black and white children receive from mothers at each age between birth and age 14 years. I relate patterns in parenting time to trends in human capital formation observed in the literature. I observe that black children spend significantly less time with their mothers than white children in the first years of life. However, differences in parenting time rapidly decline with age and there are never significant differences in teaching time after socioeconomic variables are controlled. My findings suggest that the black–white human capital gap is unlikely to be driven by differences in teaching time or differences in parenting time after children enter school.

Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09645292.2016.1235137 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to 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:taf:edecon:v:25:y:2017:i:3:p:219-233

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEDE20

DOI: 10.1080/09645292.2016.1235137

Access Statistics for this article

Education Economics is currently edited by Caren Wareing and Steve Bradley

More articles in Education Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().