IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3536.html

Maternal Labor Supply and Children's Cognitive Development

Author

Listed:
  • Francine D. Blau
  • Adam J. Grossberg

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relationship between maternal labor supply and children's cognitive development, using a sample of three- and four-year-old children of female respondents from the 1986 National Longitudinal Surveys Youth Cohort (NLSY). Respondents in the NLSY were aged 21 to 29 in 1986; thus our sample consists of children of relatively young mothers. We show that for this group the impact of maternal labor supply depends upon when it occurs. Maternal employment is found to have a negative impact when it occurs during the first year of the child's life and a potentially offsetting positive effect when it occurs during the second and subsequent years. We find some evidence that boys are more sensitive to maternal labor supply than girls though the gender difference is not significant. The negative first-year effect is not mitigated to any great extent by the increased maternal income that accompanies it, though the increase in maternal income does appears to play an important role in producing the positive effect in the second and later years.

Suggested Citation

  • Francine D. Blau & Adam J. Grossberg, 1990. "Maternal Labor Supply and Children's Cognitive Development," NBER Working Papers 3536, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3536
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3536.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sheila Krein & Andrea Beller, 1988. "Educational attainment of children from single-parent families: Differences by exposure, gender, and race," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 25(2), pages 221-234, May.
    2. Jerry Hausman, 2015. "Specification tests in econometrics," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 38(2), pages 112-134.
    3. Datcher-Loury, Linda, 1988. "Effects of Mother's Home Time on Children's Schooling," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(3), pages 367-373, August.
    4. Gary S. Becker, 1981. "A Treatise on the Family," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number beck81-1, January.
    5. Sonalde Desai & P. Chase-Lansdale & Robert Michael, 1989. "Mother or Market? Effects of Maternal Employment on the Intellectual Ability of 4-Year-Old Children," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 26(4), pages 545-561, November.
    6. Stafford, Frank P, 1987. "Women's Work, Sibling Competition, and Children's School Performance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 972-980, December.
    7. Belton Fleisher, 1977. "Mother’s home time and the production of child quality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 14(2), pages 197-212, May.
    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. Christopher J. Ruhm, 2004. "Parental Employment and Child Cognitive Development," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(1).
    2. Ruhm, Christopher J., 2008. "Maternal employment and adolescent development," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 958-983, October.
    3. Robert Kaestner & Hope Corman, 1995. "The Impact of Child Health and Family Inputs on Child Cognitive Develop-ment," NBER Working Papers 5257, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Diana L√≥pez & RocÔøΩo Ribero, 2005. "Tiempo De La Madre Y Calidad De Los Hijos," Documentos CEDE 3642, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    5. Tanaka, Ryuichi, 2008. "The gender-asymmetric effect of working mothers on children's education: Evidence from Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 586-604, December.
    6. Peter Gottschalk & Michael Hansen, 2003. "Is the Proportion of College Workers in Noncollege Jobs Increasing?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 409-448, April.
    7. Pierre Lefebvre & Philip Merrigan, 1998. "Family Background, Family Income, Maternal Work and Child Development," Cahiers de recherche CREFE / CREFE Working Papers 78, CREFE, Université du Québec à Montréal.
    8. Christina A. Houseworth & Barry R. Chiswick, 2020. "Divorce among European and Mexican Immigrants in the U.S," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 1-25, March.
    9. Reynolds Farley, 1988. "After the starting line: Blacks and women in an uphill race," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 25(4), pages 477-495, November.
    10. Xiaodong Fan & Hanming Fang & Simen Markussen, 2015. "Mothers' Employment and Children's Educational Gender Gap," NBER Working Papers 21183, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Monika Hjeds Löfmark, 2007. "Gender and time allocation differences in Taganrog, Russia," electronic International Journal of Time Use Research, Research Institute on Professions (Forschungsinstitut Freie Berufe (FFB)) and The International Association for Time Use Research (IATUR), vol. 4(1), pages 69-92, September.
    12. J. Gimenez-Nadal & Jose Molina, 2013. "Parents’ education as a determinant of educational childcare time," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(2), pages 719-749, April.
    13. T. Paul Schultz, 2005. "Fertility and Income," Working Papers 925, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    14. Gonzalez, Libertad, 2007. "The effect of benefits on single motherhood in Europe," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 393-412, June.
    15. Lisa A. Gennetian, 2004. "How Sibling Composition Affects Adolescent Schooling Outcomes When Welfare Reform Policies Increase Maternal Employment," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 30(1), pages 81-100, Winter.
    16. Julian P. Cristia, 2006. "The Effect of a First Child on Female Labor Supply: Evidence from Women Seeking Fertility Services: Working Paper 2006-11," Working Papers 18233, Congressional Budget Office.
    17. Alessandro Lizzeri & Marciano Siniscalchi, 2008. "Parental Guidance and Supervised Learning," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 1161-1195.
    18. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2008-023 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Powdthavee, Nattavudh & Vernoit, James, 2013. "Parental unemployment and children's happiness: A longitudinal study of young people's well-being in unemployed households," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 253-263.
    20. Charlene Kalenkoski & David Ribar & Leslie Stratton, 2007. "The effect of family structure on parents’ child care time in the United States and the United Kingdom," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 353-384, December.
    21. Eric Bettinger & Torbjørn Haegeland & Mari Rege, 2014. "Home with Mom: The Effects of Stay-at-Home Parents on Children's Long-Run Educational Outcomes," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(3), pages 443-467.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:3536. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.