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The effect of parents’ employment on children’s educational attainment: 2002 ed

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  • Francesconi, Marco
  • Ermisch, John

Abstract

This paper presents the conditions under which a causal interpretation can be given to the association between childhood parental employment and subsequent education of children. In a model in which parental preferences are separable in own consumption and children's well-being, estimation is complicated by endowment heterogeneity and by the fact that parents may compensate or reinforce children's endowments relevant to education attainment. A sibling difference estimatation strategy is generally not sufficient to provide a consistent estimate of the parameter of interest. Identification rests on two stronger assumptions about the timing of parents' knowledge of their children's endowments and about the technology used to produce children's human capital. We find a negative and signifcant effect on the child's educational attainment of the extent of mother's full-time employment when the child was aged 0-5. The effects of mother's part-time employment and father's employment are smaller and less well determined but again negative. In the context of our conditional demand function framework, these results suggest that a higher full family income increases the educational attainment of children, and given full family income, a higher mother's or father's wages reduces their childen's educational attainment.

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  • Francesconi, Marco & Ermisch, John, 2002. "The effect of parents’ employment on children’s educational attainment: 2002 ed," ISER Working Paper Series 2002-21, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2002-21
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    Cited by:

    1. John Ermisch, 2003. "How Do Parents Affect the Life Chances of Their Children as Adults? An Idiosyncratic Review," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 101, McMaster University.
    2. Haaland, Venke Furre & Rege, Mari & Telle, Kjetil & Votruba, Mark, 2018. "The intergenerational transfer of the employment gender gap," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 132-146.
    3. Mahler, Philippe & Winkelmann, Rainer, 2004. "Single Motherhood and (Un)Equal Educational Opportunities: Evidence for Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 1391, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Ana Rute Cardoso & Elsa Fontainha & Chiara Monfardini, 2008. "Children and parents time use: Empirical evidence on investment in human capital in France, Italy and Germany," CHILD Working Papers wp17_08, CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY.
    5. Kevin Denny, 2004. "Born to be wild? The Effect of Birth Order, Families and Schools on Truancy," Working Papers 200421, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    6. Daniela Del Boca & Anna Laura Mancini, 2013. "Parental time and child outcomes. Does gender matter?," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 187, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    7. Philippe Mahler & Rainer Winkelmann, 2004. "Secondary School Track Selection of Single-Parent Children � Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel," SOI - Working Papers 0415, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich, revised Oct 2005.
    8. Schildberg-Hoerisch, Hannah, 2011. "Does parental employment affect children's educational attainment?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1456-1467.
    9. Gianna Claudia Giannelli & Francesca Francavilla, 2007. "The Relation between Child Labour and Mothers’ Work: The Case of India," CHILD Working Papers wp22_07, CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY.

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