Good Homes
Child-Driven Parenting: Differential Early Childhood Investment by Offspring Genotype
Asta Breinholt & Dalton Conley
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
A growing literature points to children's influence on parents' behavior, including parental investments in children. Further, previous research has shown differential parental response by socioeconomic status to children's birth weight, cognitive ability, and school outcomes -- all early life predictors of later socioeconomic success. This study considers an even earlier, more exogenous predictor of parental investments: offspring genotype. Specifically, we analyze (1) whether children's genetic propensity toward educational success affects parenting during early childhood and (2) whether parenting in response to children's genetic propensity toward educational success is socially stratified. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Survey of Parents and Children (N = 6,247), we construct polygenic indexes (PGIs) for educational attainment (EA) and regress cognitively stimulating parenting behavior during early childhood on these PGIs. We apply Mendelian imputation to construct the missing parental genotype. This approach allows us to control for both parents' PGIs for EA and thereby achieve a natural experiment: Conditional on parental genotype, the offspring genotype is randomly assigned. In this way, we eliminate the possibility that child's genotype may be proxying unmeasured parent characteristics. Results differ by parenting behavior: (1) parents' singing to the child is not affected by the child's EA PGI, (2) parents play more with children with higher EA PGIs, and (3) non-college-educated parents read more to children with higher education PGIs, while college-educated parents respond less to children's EA PGI.
Paying Moms to Stay Home: Short and Long Run Effects on Parents and Children
Jonathan Gruber, Tuomas Kosonen & Kristiina Huttunen
NBER Working Paper, February 2023
Abstract:
We study the impacts of a policy designed to reward mothers who stay at home rather than join the labor force when their children are under age three. We use regional and over time variation to show that the Finnish Home Care Allowance (HCA) decreases maternal employment in both the short and long term. The effects are large enough for the existence of home care benefit system to explain the higher short-term child penalty in Finland than comparable nations. Home care benefits also negatively affect the early childhood cognitive test results of children, decrease the likelihood of choosing academic high school, and increase youth crimes. We confirm that the mechanism of action is changing work/home care arrangements by studying a day care fee reform that had the opposite effect of raising incentives to work - with corresponding opposite effects on mothers and children compared to HCA. Our findings suggest that shifting child care from the home to the market increases labor force participation and improves child outcomes.
Income and Child Maltreatment: Evidence from a Discontinuity in Tax Benefits
Katherine Rittenhouse
University of California Working Paper, February 2023
Abstract:
Poverty is one of the leading predictors of child maltreatment, yet the causal relationship is not well-understood. In this paper I provide new evidence of the effects of income on child protection system (CPS) referrals, investigations and foster care placements. I exploit a discontinuity in child-related tax benefits around a January 1 birthdate, which results in otherwise-similar families receiving considerably different refunds during the first year of a child's life. I use 20 years of linked administrative data from California to determine the effects of this additional income on CPS involvement. A one-time $1,000 transfer to low-income households decreases the number of referrals to CPS in the first 3 years of a child's life by approximately 3%. These effects persist throughout the system, decreasing investigations (3%) and days spent in foster care (8%). Effects also persist throughout childhood, reducing CPS involvement through at least age 8. Heterogeneity analyses by allegation and reporter category as well as by child race and gender suggest that these effects capture true reductions in maltreatment, as opposed to changes in reporting behavior. These findings suggest that providing low-income families with additional resources during the first year of a child's life are a fruitful strategy for reducing child maltreatment.
Estimating Causal Effects of Fertility on Life Course Outcomes: Evidence Using A Dyadic Genetic Instrumental Variable Approach
Boyan Zheng, Qiongshi Lu & Jason Fletcher
NBER Working Paper, February 2023
Abstract:
The causal effects of fertility are a central focus in the social sciences, but the analysis is challenged by the endogeneity of fertility choices. Earlier work has proposed several "natural experiments" from twin births or gender composition of earlier births to assess whether having more children affects adults' outcomes, though there are limitations to using rare (twins) and weak (gender composition) instrumental variables for fertility. This paper proposes a new "natural experiment" approach to assessing the causal effects of fertility by measuring the combination of couples' genetics in predicting fertility -- a dyadic genetic instrumental variable, where the key idea (exclusion restriction) is that the interactions of the couple's genetics that shift the likelihood of fertility is unknown to the couples. We use a nationally representative sample of couples to examine the long-lasting effects of fertility on older adults' life outcomes, including labor market outcomes, personality traits, and subjective wellbeing. We find that fertility reduces females' extraversion and years of working and some evidence indicates that fertility reduces both males' and females' lifetime number of jobs worked.
Awe Sparks Prosociality in Children
Eftychia Stamkou et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Rooted in the novel and the mysterious, awe is a common experience in childhood, but research is almost silent with respect to the import of this emotion for children. Awe makes individuals feel small, thereby shifting their attention to the social world. Here, we studied the effects of art-elicited awe on children's prosocial behavior toward an out-group and its unique physiological correlates. In two preregistered studies (Study 1: N = 159, Study 2: N = 353), children between 8 and 13 years old viewed movie clips that elicited awe, joy, or a neutral (control) response. Children who watched the awe-eliciting clip were more likely to spend their time on an effortful task (Study 1) and to donate their experimental earnings (Studies 1 and 2), all toward benefiting refugees. They also exhibited increased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, an index of parasympathetic nervous system activation associated with social engagement. We discuss implications for fostering prosociality by reimagining children's environments to inspire awe at a critical age.