Report

Maternal Education, Home Environments and the Development of Children and Adolescents

Author(s) / Creator(s)

Carneiro, Pedro
Meghir, Costas
Parey, Matthias

Abstract / Description

We study the intergenerational effects of maternal education on children's cognitive achievement, behavioral problems, grade repetition and obesity. We address endogeneity of maternal schooling by instrumenting with variation in schooling costs when the mother grew up. Using matched data from the female participants of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and their children, we can control for mother's ability and family background factors. Our results show substantial intergenerational returns to education. For children aged 7-8, for example, our IV results indicate that an additional year of mother's schooling increases the child's performance on a standardized math test by almost 0.1 of a standard deviation, and reduces the incidence of behavioral problems. Our data set allows us to study a large array of channels which may transmit the effect of maternal education to the child, including family environment and parental investments at different ages of the child. We find that income effects, delayed childbearing, and assortative mating are likely to be important, and we show that maternal education leads to substantial differences in maternal labor supply. We investigate heterogeneity in returns, and we present results focusing both on very early stages in the child's life as well as adolescent outcomes. We present a falsification exercise to support the validity of our instruments, and our results are found to be robust in a sensitivity analysis. We discuss policy implications and relate our findings to intergenerational mobility.

Keyword(s)

Erziehung Entwicklung Kind intergenerationale Mobilität education child development intergenerational mobility

Persistent Identifier

Date of first publication

2007

Is part of series

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit/ Institute for the Study of Labor: IZA Discussion Paper Series;3072

Citation

  • Author(s) / Creator(s)
    Carneiro, Pedro
  • Author(s) / Creator(s)
    Meghir, Costas
  • Author(s) / Creator(s)
    Parey, Matthias
  • PsychArchives acquisition timestamp
    2022-11-17T11:06:13Z
  • Made available on
    2008-06-03
  • Made available on
    2015-12-01T10:32:09Z
  • Made available on
    2022-11-17T11:06:13Z
  • Date of first publication
    2007
  • Abstract / Description
    We study the intergenerational effects of maternal education on children's cognitive achievement, behavioral problems, grade repetition and obesity. We address endogeneity of maternal schooling by instrumenting with variation in schooling costs when the mother grew up. Using matched data from the female participants of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and their children, we can control for mother's ability and family background factors. Our results show substantial intergenerational returns to education. For children aged 7-8, for example, our IV results indicate that an additional year of mother's schooling increases the child's performance on a standardized math test by almost 0.1 of a standard deviation, and reduces the incidence of behavioral problems. Our data set allows us to study a large array of channels which may transmit the effect of maternal education to the child, including family environment and parental investments at different ages of the child. We find that income effects, delayed childbearing, and assortative mating are likely to be important, and we show that maternal education leads to substantial differences in maternal labor supply. We investigate heterogeneity in returns, and we present results focusing both on very early stages in the child's life as well as adolescent outcomes. We present a falsification exercise to support the validity of our instruments, and our results are found to be robust in a sensitivity analysis. We discuss policy implications and relate our findings to intergenerational mobility.
    en
  • Persistent Identifier
    https://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bsz:291-psydok-16233
  • Persistent Identifier
    https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11780/1086
  • Persistent Identifier
    https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.9100
  • Language of content
    eng
  • Is part of
    IZA Discussion Paper Series No. 3072
  • Is part of series
    Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit/ Institute for the Study of Labor: IZA Discussion Paper Series;3072
  • Keyword(s)
    Erziehung
    de
  • Keyword(s)
    Entwicklung
    de
  • Keyword(s)
    Kind
    de
  • Keyword(s)
    intergenerationale Mobilität
    de
  • Keyword(s)
    education
    en
  • Keyword(s)
    child development
    en
  • Keyword(s)
    intergenerational mobility
    en
  • Dewey Decimal Classification number(s)
    150
  • Title
    Maternal Education, Home Environments and the Development of Children and Adolescents
    en
  • DRO type
    report
  • Visible tag(s)
    PsyDok