Do parental time investments react to changes in child’s skills and health?

Health Endowments, Schooling Allocation in the Family, and Longevity: Evidence from US Twins

“…We distinguish health endowments from skill endowments and health investments from skill investments, especially given the evidence that the behavior of parents could be either compensating or reinforcing depending on the children's endowment and investment type (e.g., Ayalew, 2005;Nicoletti and Tonei, 2017;Yi et al, 2015).…”

“…Since this paper deals with educational investments, we restrict our comparison to a group of papers that study investments in broadly defined skills. We further classify these papers into three groups by their measures of a child's endowment: (1) low birth weight or exposure to adverse environment (a pandemic, nuclear power plant accident, and the like) while in utero or in early childhood (Abufhele et al, 2017;Aizer and Cunha, 2012;Almond and Currie, 2011;Almond et al, 2009;Bharadwaj et al, 2018Bharadwaj et al, , 2013Black et al, 2010;Datar et al, 2010;Halla and Zweimüller, 2014;Hsin, 2012;Kelly, 2011;Parman, 2015;Restrepo, 2016;Venkataramani, 2012;Yi, 2019); (2) education polygenic score (PGS) (Sanz-de Galdeano and Terskaya, 2019); (3) endowments measured after birth (Ayalew, 2005;Behrman et al, 1982Behrman et al, , 1994Borga and Pidkuyko, 2018;Frijters et al, 2013;Nicoletti and Tonei, 2017;Rosales-Rueda, 2014;Terskaya, 2019;Yi et al, 2015).…”

“…2 Nicoletti and Tonei (2017) use Australian data and show that parents compensate for health shocks with parental time investments in developmental activities. We complement papers by Terskaya (2019) and Nicoletti and Tonei (2017) by using data from a different country (USA), a different identification method, and different measures of health endowment.…”

“…In this group several papers find reinforcement (Ayalew, 2005;Behrman et al, 1994;Frijters et al, 2013;Nicoletti and Tonei, 2017), while results by Behrman et al (1982) are nuanced. This paper does not confirm reinforcement and, moreover, does not rule out compensation.…”

Center-Based Care and Parenting Activities

“…A further possible explanation is if parents reinforce child development by spending more time on activities with children (e.g. Nicoletti and Tonei, 2020). The reduction in housework suggests that an easing of time constraints may also help explain these findings.…”