The Duration of Paid Parental Leave and Children's Scholastic Performance

Qian Liu () and Oskar Skans
Additional contact information
Qian Liu: Uppsala University

No 4244, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study how the duration of paid parental leave affects the accumulation of cognitive skills among children. We use a reform which extended parental leave benefits from 12 to 15 months for Swedish children born after August 1988 to evaluate the effects of prolonged parental leave on children's test scores and grades at age 16. We show that, on average, the reform had no effect on children's scholastic performance. However, we do find positive effects for children of well-educated mothers, a result that is robust to a number of different specifications. We find no corresponding heterogeneity relative to parental earnings or fathers' education, or relative to other predictors of child performance. We find no effects on intermediate outcomes such as mothers' subsequent earnings, child health, parental fertility, divorce rates, or the mothers' mental health. Overall the results suggest positive causal interaction effects between mothers' education and the amount of time mothers spend with their children. Since the institutional context is one in which the alternative is subsidized day care, the results imply that subsidizing longer parental leave spells rather than day care reinforce the relationship between maternal education and school outcomes.

Keywords: maternal employment; education; human capital; cognitive skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - Published in: B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy: Contributions to Economic Analysis and Policy, 2010, 10 (1), Article 3

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Duration of Paid Parental Leave and Children's Scholastic Performance (2010)
Working Paper: The duration of paid parental leave and children’s scholastic performance (2009)
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