IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp16441.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Parenting with Patience: Parental Incentives and Child Development

Author

Listed:
  • Del Boca, Daniela

    (University of Turin)

  • Flinn, Christopher

    (New York University)

  • Verriest, Ewout

    (New York University)

  • Wiswall, Matthew

    (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Abstract

We construct a dynamic model of child development where forward-looking parents and children jointly take actions to increase the child's cognitive and non-cognitive skills within a Markov Perfect Equilibrium framework. In addition to time and money investments in their child, parents also choose whether to use explicit incentives to increase the child's self-investment, which may reduce the child's future intrinsic motivation to invest by reducing the child's discount factor. We use the estimated model parameters to show that the use of extrinsic motivation has large costs in terms of the child's future incentives to invest in themselves.

Suggested Citation

  • Del Boca, Daniela & Flinn, Christopher & Verriest, Ewout & Wiswall, Matthew, 2023. "Parenting with Patience: Parental Incentives and Child Development," IZA Discussion Papers 16441, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16441
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp16441.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kosse, Fabian & Pfeiffer, Friedhelm, 2012. "Impatience among preschool children and their mothers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 493-495.
    2. Jesper Bagger & Fran?ois Fontaine & Fabien Postel-Vinay & Jean-Marc Robin, 2014. "Tenure, Experience, Human Capital, and Wages: A Tractable Equilibrium Search Model of Wage Dynamics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(6), pages 1551-1596, June.
    3. Luc Arrondel, 2013. "Are “daddy’s boys” just as rich as daddy? The transmission of values between generations," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(4), pages 439-471, December.
    4. Carneiro, Pedro & Heckman, James J., 2003. "Human Capital Policy," IZA Discussion Papers 821, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Brown, Heather & van der Pol, Marjon, 2015. "Intergenerational transfer of time and risk preferences," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 187-204.
    6. Etienne Wasmer, 2006. "General versus Specific Skills in Labor Markets with Search Frictions and Firing Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 811-831, June.
    7. Kooreman, P., 2007. "Time, money, peers, and parents : Some data and theories on teenage behavior," Other publications TiSEM 05026f0a-e418-4eb8-a483-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. Diego Daruich, 2018. "The Macroeconomic Consequences of Early Childhood Development Policies," Working Papers 2018-010, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    9. Greg Kaplan, 2012. "Moving Back Home: Insurance against Labor Market Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(3), pages 446-512.
    10. Castillo, Marco & Ferraro, Paul J. & Jordan, Jeffrey L. & Petrie, Ragan, 2011. "The today and tomorrow of kids: Time preferences and educational outcomes of children," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(11), pages 1377-1385.
    11. Hendricks, Lutz, 2007. "How important is discount rate heterogeneity for wealth inequality?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(9), pages 3042-3068, September.
    12. Jesper Bagger & Francois Fontaine & Jean-Marc Robin, 2014. "Tenure, experience, human capital and wages: a tractable equilibrium search model of wage dynamics," CeMMAP working papers 12/14, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    13. Flavio Cunha & James J. Heckman, 2008. "Formulating, Identifying and Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(4).
    14. Lino, Mark & Kuczynski, Kevin & Rodriguez, Nestor & Schap, TusaRebecca, 2017. "Expenditures on Children by Families, 2015," CNPP Reports 327257, United States Department of Agriculture, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.
    15. Joseph Mullins, 2022. "Designing Cash Transfers in the Presence of Children's Human Capital Formation," Working Papers 2022-019, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    16. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/7rep5mp5ij95l94ec64n5tdclp is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Peter Kooreman, 2007. "Time, money, peers, and parents; some data and theories on teenage behavior," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 20(1), pages 9-33, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daniela Del Boca & Christopher Flinn & Ewout Verriest & Matthew Wiswall, 2018. "Actors in the Child Development Process," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 575, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    2. Daniela Del Boca & Christopher Flinn & Ewout Verriest & Matthew Wiswall, 2018. "Actors in the Child Development Process," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 575, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    3. Daniela Del Boca & Chiara Monfardini & Cheti Nicoletti, 2012. "Self investments of adolescents and their cognitive development," Discussion Papers 12/24, Department of Economics, University of York.
    4. Brenøe, Anne Ardila & Epper, Thomas, 2022. "Parenting values and the intergenerational transmission of time preferences," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    5. Deborah Cobb-Clark & Tue Gørgens, 2014. "Parents’ economic support of young-adult children: do socioeconomic circumstances matter?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(2), pages 447-471, April.
    6. Philipp Huebler & Andreas Kucher, 2016. "Ashes to ashes, time to time - Parental time discounting and its role in the intergenerational transmission of smoking," Discussion Paper Series 326, Universitaet Augsburg, Institute for Economics.
    7. Samek, Anya & Gray, Andre & Datar, Ashlesha & Nicosia, Nancy, 2021. "Adolescent time and risk preferences: Measurement, determinants and field consequences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 460-488.
    8. Andreoni, James & Kuhn, Michael A. & List, John A. & Samek, Anya & Sokal, Kevin & Sprenger, Charles, 2019. "Toward an understanding of the development of time preferences: Evidence from field experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 1-1.
    9. Hübler, Philipp, 2017. "Heritability of time preference: Evidence from German twin data," MPRA Paper 77620, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Tomáš Želinský, 2021. "Intertemporal Choices of Children and Adults from Poor Roma Communities: A Case Study from Slovakia," Eastern European Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 59(4), pages 378-405, July.
    11. Lukas Kiessling & Shyamal Chowdhury & Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch & Matthias Sutter, 2021. "Parental Paternalism and Patience," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2021_03, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    12. Rasmus Lentz & Nicolas Roys, 2024. "Training and Search On the Job," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 53, pages 123-146, July.
    13. Rasmus Lentz & Nicolas Roys, 2024. "Training and Search On the Job," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 53, pages 123-146, July.
    14. Daniela Del Boca & Chiara Monfardini & Cheti Nicoletti, 2012. "Children's and Parents' Time-Use Choices and Cognitive Development during Adolescence," Working Papers 2012-006, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    15. Philipp Huebler, 2017. "Heritability of time preference: Evidence from German twin data," Discussion Paper Series 334, Universitaet Augsburg, Institute for Economics.
    16. Giovanni Busetta & Maria Gabriella Campolo & Antonino Di Pino, 2019. "Children’s Use of Time and Well-Being in Italy," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 12(3), pages 821-845, June.
    17. Alexandre Volle & Antoine Cazals & Bilal El Rafhi, 2023. "Another Wind of Change? Evidence about Political Outsiders in the French Parliament," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 133(2), pages 203-231.
    18. 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.
    19. Lindsey Macmillan & Emma Tominey, 2023. "Parental inputs and socio-economic gaps in early child development," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(3), pages 1513-1543, July.
    20. Kaas, Leo & Lalé, Etienne & Siassi, Nawid, 2023. "Job Ladder and Wealth Dynamics in General Equilibrium," IZA Discussion Papers 16664, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    time allocation; child development; parenting styles;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16441. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.