Blame the parents
O Youth and Beauty: Children's Looks and Children's Cognitive Development
Daniel Hamermesh, Rachel Gordon & Robert Crosnoe
NBER Working Paper, October 2019
Abstract:
We use data from the 11 waves of the U.S. Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development 1991-2005, following children from ages 6 months through 15 years. Observers rated videos of them, obtaining measures of looks at each age. Given their family income, parents’ education, race/ethnicity and gender, being better-looking raised subsequent changes in measurements of objective learning outcomes. The gains imply a long-run impact on cognitive achievement of about 0.04 standard deviations per standard deviation of differences in looks. Similar estimates on changes in reading and arithmetic scores at ages 7, 11 and 16 in the U.K. National Child Development Survey 1958 cohort show larger effects. The extra gains persist when instrumenting children’s looks by their mother’s, and do not work through teachers’ differential treatment of better-looking children, any relation between looks and a child’s behavior, his/her victimization by bullies or self-confidence. Results from both data sets show that a substantial part of the economic returns to beauty result indirectly from its effects on educational attainment. A person whose looks are one standard deviation above average attains 0.4 years more schooling than an otherwise identical average-looking individual.
Using DNA From Mothers and Children to Study Parental Investment in Children’s Educational Attainment
Jasmin Wertz et al.
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study tested implications of new genetic discoveries for understanding the association between parental investment and children’s educational attainment. A novel design matched genetic data from 860 British mothers and their children with home‐visit measures of parenting: the E‐Risk Study. Three findings emerged. First, both mothers’ and children’s education‐associated genetics, summarized in a genome‐wide polygenic score, were associated with parenting — a gene–environment correlation. Second, accounting for genetic influences slightly reduced associations between parenting and children’s attainment — indicating some genetic confounding. Third, mothers’ genetics were associated with children’s attainment over and above children's own genetics, via cognitively stimulating parenting — an environmentally mediated effect. Findings imply that, when interpreting parents’ effects on children, environmentalists must consider genetic transmission, but geneticists must also consider environmental transmission.
Setting a Good Example? Examining Sibling Spillovers in Educational Achievement Using a Regression Discontinuity Design
Krzysztof Karbownik & Umut Özek
NBER Working Paper, October 2019
Abstract:
Using a regression discontinuity design generated by school-entry cutoffs and school records from an anonymous district in Florida, we identify externalities in human capital production function arising from sibling spillovers. We find positive spillover effects from an older to a younger child in less affluent families and negative spillover effects from a younger to an older child in more affluent families. These results are consistent with direct spillovers dominating in economically disadvantaged families and with parental reinforcement in more affluent families.
Is the Best Interest of the Child Best for Children? Educational Attainment and Child Custody Assignment
Yang Chen & Trevon Logan
Southern Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Between the 1970s and 1990s, state custody laws moved from maternal preference to the “best interests of the child” doctrine, which gives fathers and mothers equal treatment in child custody assignment. We exploit exogenous variation across states in the timing of this custody law change to estimate the long‐term implications of exposure to a gender‐neutral custody law regime. We find that childhood exposure to gender neutral custody laws has a negative effect on educational attainment. A child exposed to gender neutral custody law is less likely to graduate from high school by 1.5 to 2.0 percentage points.
Different and Not Equal: The Uneven Association of Race, Poverty, and Abortion Laws on Abortion Timing
Alexa Solazzo
Social Problems, November 2019, Pages 519–547
Abstract:
The number of regulations surrounding abortion has increased drastically in recent years. It is important to assess how these laws relate to abortion timing, since the cost, safety, and accessibility of abortion varies by how many weeks pregnant a woman is when the procedure occurs. Research examining how state laws relate to abortion timing generally use rates or data from vital statistics; while informative, such methods do not allow researchers to examine how these laws may be disproportionately associated with abortion timing among select groups of women, including poor and nonwhite women. To fill this research gap, I analyze data from the nationally representative 2008 Abortion Patient Survey, with appended information on state laws regarding abortion in 2008. I find that laws requiring second trimester abortions be performed in a hospital and both in-person counselling and waiting periods have different associations with abortion timing based on race and income-to-poverty status. Predicted abortion timing for black and Hispanic women differs based on state laws and their income-to-poverty status, while for white women, models show that the association between state laws and abortion timing is not dependent on their income-to-poverty status. Overall, this research illustrates the relevance of state-level abortion laws for shaping abortion timing among women, highlighting how these relationships differ across racial and socioeconomic groups in the United States.
Becoming a mother entails anatomical changes in the ventral striatum of the human brain that facilitate its responsiveness to offspring cues
Elseline Hoekzema et al.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In mothers, offspring cues are associated with a powerful reinforcing value that motivates maternal care. Animal studies show that this is mediated by dopamine release into the nucleus accumbens, a core component of the brain’s reward system located in the ventral striatum (VStr). The VStr is also known to respond to infant signals in human mothers. However, it is unknown whether pregnancy modifies the anatomy or functionality of this structure, and whether such modifications underlie its strong reactivity to offspring cues. Therefore, we analyzed structural and functional neuroimaging data from a unique pre-conception prospective cohort study involving first-time mothers investigated before and after their pregnancy as well as nulliparous control women scanned at similar time intervals. First, we delineated the anatomy of the VStr in each subject’s neuroanatomical space and examined whether there are volumetric changes in this structure across sessions. Then, we tested if these changes could predict the mothers’ brain responses to visual stimuli of their infants. We found decreases in the right VStr and a trend for left VStr reductions in the women who were pregnant between sessions compared to the women who were not. Furthermore, VStr volume reductions across pregnancy were associated with infant-related VStr responses in the postpartum period, with stronger volume decreases predicting stronger functional activation to offspring cues. These findings provide the first indications that the transition to motherhood renders anatomical adaptations in the VStr that promote the strong responsiveness of a mother’s reward circuit to cues of her infant.
Maternal Work Hours and Childhood Obesity: Evidence Using Instrumental Variables Related to Sibling School Eligibility
Charles Courtemanche, Rusty Tchernis & Xilin Zhou
Journal of Human Capital, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study exploits plausibly exogenous variation derived from the youngest sibling’s school eligibility to estimate the effects of maternal work on the weight outcomes of older children. We first show that mothers’ work hours increase gradually along both the extensive and intensive margins as the age of the youngest child rises, whereas mothers’ spouses’ work hours do not appear to be responsive. We develop an instrumental-variables model that shows that mothers’ work hours lead to larger increases in children’s body mass index z-scores and probabilities of being overweight/obese than those identified in previous studies. Subsample analyses find that the effects are concentrated among advantaged households.
Work Scheduling for American Mothers, 1990 and 2012
Peter Hepburn
Social Problems, forthcoming
Abstract:
American working conditions have deteriorated over the last 40 years. One commonly-noted change is the rise of nonstandard and unstable work schedules. Such schedules, especially when held by mothers, negatively affect family functioning and the well-being and development of children; they have implications for the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. This article describes and compares the working schedules — in terms of type, duration, and variability — of American mothers in 1990 and 2012 in an attempt to assess whether nonstandard and unstable schedules are growing more common. Analyses demonstrate that evening work has increased in prevalence for single mothers but not for their partnered peers. Mothers in both single-mother and two-partner households experienced considerably greater within-week schedule variability and higher likelihood of weekend work in 2012 than they did in 1990. These changes resulted from widespread shifts in the nature of work, especially affecting less educated mothers.
Family Eating Behavior and Child Eating Patterns Differences Between Children With and Without Siblings
Chelsea Kracht et al.
Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, November–December 2019, Pages 1188-1193
Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of mother–child dyads of 5–7-year-old children, (nonsingletons with a 2-to-4-year-old sibling) was conducted. Anthropometrics were measured. Mothers completed questionnaires and a child dietary log. Healthy Eating Index 2010 (HEI) score was calculated. Linear regression models adjusting for child age, child sex, maternal body mass index, and hours-away-from-home were conducted, with a revised P < .021.
Results: Sixty-eight mother–child dyads (27 singletons, 41 nonsingletons) participated. Singletons exhibited less healthy family eating behaviors (β = −4.98, SE = 1.88, P = .003), and lower total HEI scores than did nonsingletons (average: β = −8.91, SE =2.40, P = .001). On average, singletons had lower scores in 3 HEI components compared with nonsingletons (P < .021 for all).