Maternal Education, Parental Investment and Non-Cognitive Characteristics in Rural China

Arbeitspapier

The importance of non-cognitive skills in determining long-term human capital and labor market outcomes is widely acknowledged, but relatively little is known about how educational investments by parents may respond to children’s non-cognitive characteristics. This paper evaluates the parental response to non-cognitive variation across siblings in rural Gansu province, China, employing a household fixed effects specification; the non-cognitive measures of interest are defined as the inverse of both externalizing challenges (behavioral problems and aggression) and internalizing challenges (anxiety and withdrawal). The results suggest that there is significant heterogeneity with respect to maternal education. More educated mothers appear to compensate for differences between their children, investing more in a child who exhibits greater non-cognitive deficits, while less educated mothers reinforce these differences. Most importantly, there is evidence that these compensatory investments are associated with the narrowing of non-cognitive deficits over time for children of more educated mothers, while there is no comparable pattern in households with less educated mothers.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 11607

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Education and Inequality ; Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration ; Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
• Subject: non-cognitive characteristics ; parental investment ; intrahousehold allocation

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Leight, Jessica ; Liu, Elaine M.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2018

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/185067
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:46 AM CET