Parental Investments in Early Life and Child Outcomes: Evidence from Swedish Parental Leave Rules

Rita Ginja, Jenny Jans and Arizo Karimi

No 2017-085, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: We study how parental resources early in life affect children's health and education exploiting the so-called speed premium (SP) in the Swedish parental leave system. The SP grants mothers higher parental leave benefits for the subsequent child without re-establishing eligibility through pre-birth market work if the two births occur within a pre-specified interval. This allow us to use a Regression Discontinuity framework. We find that the SP improves the educational outcomes of the first-born child, but not of the second-born. Impacts are driven by a combination of a positive income shock, and substitution from informal care to maternal time.

Keywords: parental leave; Earnings; time investments; child outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J18 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-lab and nep-ltv
Note: ECI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Ginja_ ... ts-swedish-rules.pdf First version, October 29, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Parental Investments in Early Life and Child Outcomes. Evidence from Swedish Parental Leave Rules (2017)
Working Paper: Parental Investments in Early Life and Child Outcomes: Evidence from Swedish Parental Leave Rules (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hka:wpaper:2017-085

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