UCLouvain Economics Seminar: Cheti Nicoletti

Do parental time investments react to changes in child's skills and health?

Cheti Nicoletti, The University of York

While a large literature has focused on  how parental investments respond to differences between siblings in human capital at birth, very little is known about the response of parents to changes in their child's human capital across time. Using the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, we measure investments by considering the time parents spend with their child in doing formative activities. By adopting a child fixed-effect instrumental variable estimation to address endogeneity, we find that parents reinforce for differences in their child's socio-emotional skills, compensate for changes in her physical health, and are neutral to variation in her cognitive skills.
(joint paper with Valentina Tonei, University of York)