We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 11106
October 2017
Parental Investments in Early Life and Child Outcomes: Evidence from Swedish Parental Leave Rules

published as 'Parental Leave Benefits, Household Labor Supply, and Children's Long-Run Outcomes' in: Journal of Labor Economics, 2020, 38 (1), 261-320.

How do parental resources early in life affect children's health and schooling outcomes? We address this question by exploiting the so-called speed premium (SP) in the Swedish parental leave (PL) system. The SP grants mothers higher PL benefits for the subsequent child without the need to re-quality for benefits through pre-birth market work, if the two births occur within a pre-specified interval. The eligibility birth interval for this automatic renewal of PL benefits was set to 24 months in 1980–1985, and to 30 months since 1986. This allow us to use a Regression Discontinuity framework to study how additional parental time and monetary resources impacts both the existing and new child's educational and health outcomes. We find that maternal eligibility to the SP increases the 9th grade GPA, and the likelihood of college attendance of the first-born child, but it does not affect the secondborn. These impacts can be generalized for higher-order parities. The effects are prevalent primarily among children to high-income mothers. Impacts are driven by a combination of a persistent positive income shock, and substitution away from informal care to maternal time.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

About IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA Network (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)