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The Timing of Parental Income and Child Outcomes: The Role of Permanent and Transitory Shocks

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  • Emma Tominey

Abstract

How do shocks to parental income drive adolescent human capital, including years of schooling, high school dropout, university attendance, IQ and health? A structural model decomposes household shocks into permanent and transitory components, then the effect of shocks at age 1-16 is estimated for 600,000 Norwegian children. The effect of permanent shocks declines - and of transitory shocks is small and constant across child age, suggesting parents optimise similarly to consumption. However there is a lower effect of transitory shocks for liquidity constrained parents. An interpretation is that these parents use income shocks for essential consumption rather than investment.

Suggested Citation

  • Emma Tominey, 2010. "The Timing of Parental Income and Child Outcomes: The Role of Permanent and Transitory Shocks," CEE Discussion Papers 0120, Centre for the Economics of Education, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:ceedps:0120
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    Cited by:

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    2. McNally, Sandra, 2010. "Evaluating education policies: the evidence from economic research," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 57973, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Cooper, Kerris & Stewart, Kitty, 2020. "Does household income affect children’s outcomes? A systematic review of the evidence," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 107029, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Cooper, Kerris & Stewart, Kitty, 2017. "Does Money Affect Children’s Outcomes? An update," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103494, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Xu, Yilan & Yilmazer, Tansel, 2021. "Childhood socioeconomic status, adulthood obesity and health: The role of parental permanent and transitory income," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 283(C).
    6. Kerris Cooper & Kitty Stewart, 2017. "Does Money Affect Children's Outcomes? An update," CASE Papers /203, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    7. Kerris Cooper & Kitty Stewart, 2021. "Does Household Income Affect children’s Outcomes? A Systematic Review of the Evidence," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(3), pages 981-1005, June.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income; pupil outcomes; shocks;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

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