The Rug Rat Race

Abstract

After three decades of decline, the amount of time spent by parents on childcare in the U.S. began to rise dramatically in the mid-1990s. Moreover, the rise in childcare time was particularly pronounced among college-educated parents. Why would highly educated parents increase the amount of time they allocate to childcare at the same time that their own market returns have skyrocketed? After finding no empirical support for standard explanations, such as selection or income effects, we offer a new explanation. We argue that increased competition for college admissions may be an important source of these trends. The number of college-bound students has surged in recent years, coincident with the rise in time spent on childcare. The resulting "cohort crowding" has led parents to compete more aggressively for college slots by spending increasing amounts of time on college preparation. Our theoretical model shows that, since college-educated parents have a comparative advantage in college preparation, rivalry leads them to increase preparation time by a greater amount than less-educated parents. We provide empirical support for our explanation with a comparison of trends between the U.S. and Canada, and a comparison across racial groups in the U.S.

Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments

“…In interviews with Silicon Valley parents, Cooper (2014) finds that upper-class parents frequently report concerns that increasing economic polarization will make it more difficult for their children to have meaningful, well-paying careers unless they obtain high levels of education, preferably at elite institutions. This anxiety could lead to upper-class families increasing their investments in children to prepare them for increasingly competitive admissions processes, as hypothesized by Ramey and Ramey (2010). In contrast, middleand lower-class parents interviewed by Cooper (2014) reported little concern about any potential effects of increasing income inequality on their children.…”

“…Charting child care time, Ramey and Ramey (2010) find that the gap between college-educated and less educated mothers widened substantially after the mid-1990s. These increases appear most pronounced for time in teaching and activities (Ramey and Ramey, 2010) and for time spent by mothers with children under the age of five (Hurst, 2010;Sacks and Stevenson, 2010).…”

“…Charting child care time, Ramey and Ramey (2010) find that the gap between college-educated and less educated mothers widened substantially after the mid-1990s. These increases appear most pronounced for time in teaching and activities (Ramey and Ramey, 2010) and for time spent by mothers with children under the age of five (Hurst, 2010;Sacks and Stevenson, 2010). Extending the time series, Altintas (2016) finds that the gap in time spent in developmental child care between collegeeducated mothers of young children and mothers who had no more than a high school degree grew significantly from the mid-1970s through 2013, with wide gaps especially emerging in the recent period 2003-2013. However, the trends in class gaps in parental investment in children are not without nuance.…”

“…Over the same period, existing class divides -by household income and by parental educational attainment -in how much money parents spend on children and in how much time parents spend in child care have widened considerably (Ramey and Ramey, 2010;Kornrich and Furstenberg, 2013;Altintas, 2016). These increasingly evident class divides in parental investments of time and money spark concern because parental investment is seen as an important factor in the intergenerational perpetuation of advantage (Downey, von Hippel, and Broh, 2004;Waldfogel and Washbrook, 2011;Potter and Roksa, 2013).…”

Time for Children: Trends in the Employment Patterns of Parents, 1967–2009

“…Thus, we also evaluate trends in family income, conditional on employment status, and provide evidence on the extent to which increases in work have been accompanied by income gains. market time, prior research (Aguiar& Hurst, 2007;Bianchi, 2000;Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, & Robinson, 2000;Bianchi, Robinson, &Milkie, 2006;Bianchi & Wight, 2010;Gauthier, Smeeding, &Furstenberg, 2004;Ramey & Ramey, 2010;Sayer, Bianchi, & Robinson, 2004;Zick&Bryant, 1996) suggests that mothers have at least partially protected time with children by sacrificing sleep and other leisure activities,that both employed and non-employed mothers have increased their time in primary childcare, and that resident fathers have become more involved in childcare.We explore these issues using time usedata from 1975 and 2003-2008 …”