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Source: Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Resulting in 3 citations.
1. Ruhm, Christopher J.
Parental Employment and Child Cognitive Development
Working Paper, Greensboro, Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, May 2002.
Also: http://depts.washington.edu/crfam/Symposium1/Ruhm.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Keyword(s): Cognitive Development; Employment; Maternal Employment; Mothers, Education; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Work Hours/Schedule

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Revised version of NBER Working Paper W7666, April 2000 (http://papers.nber.org/papers/w7666). This study investigates the relationship between parental employment and child cognitive development using data from multiple years of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Maternal labor supply during the first three years of the child's life is predicted to have a small negative effect on the verbal ability of 3 and 4 year olds and a substantial detrimental impact on the reading and math achievement of 5 and 6 year olds. Working during the second and third years appears to have less favorable or more deleterious consequences when the mother is also employed in the first year. The results are robust to the inclusion of controls for day care arrangements or paternal job-holding and there is some indication that early employment may be particularly costly for children in traditional' two-parent families. Finally, the data suggest that paternal and maternal employment have qualitatively similar effects, hinting at the importance of time investments by fathers. The overall conclusion is that previous research may have provided an overly optimistic assessment of the effects of parental employment on child cognitive development.
Bibliography Citation
Ruhm, Christopher J. "Parental Employment and Child Cognitive Development." Working Paper, Greensboro, Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, May 2002.
2. Ruhm, Christopher J.
Parental Employment and Child Cognitive Development
Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, September 2002.
Also: http://www.uncg.edu/bae/people/ruhm/
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Keyword(s): Cognitive Development; Fathers, Involvement; Maternal Employment; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Test Scores/Test theory/IRT

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Revised version of May working paper. This study investigates how parental employment affects child cognitive development. The results suggest that maternal labor supply during the first three years of the child's life has a small deleterious effect on the predicted verbal ability of 3 and 4 year olds and a larger detrimental impact on the reading and mathematics achievement of 5 and 6 year olds -- working an extra 20 hours per week is associated with test score reductions from the median to the 49th, 46th, and 47th percentiles respectively. The negative relationship between cognitive performance and maternal job-holding during the second and third years is particularly strong if the mother works long hours or was also employed in the child's first year. These findings are robust to the inclusion of controls for day care arrangements or paternal employment. There is some indication that early work may be especially costly for children in 'traditional' two-parent families and the data hint at the importance of time investments by fathers. There are two main reasons why this study provides a more pessimistic assessment of the impact of early employment than most prior research. First, previous analyses often control relatively crudely for differences in child and household characteristics that are correlated with parental labor supply. Second, the negative relationships are more pronounced for the reading and mathematics performance of 5 and 6 year old children than for the verbal test scores of 3 and 4 year olds that have more frequently been examined.
Bibliography Citation
Ruhm, Christopher J. "Parental Employment and Child Cognitive Development." Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, September 2002.
3. Welding, Kevin
Maternal Employment and Academic Achievement: An Empirical Project
Masters Thesis, Applied Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, May 2006.
Also: http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~kwelding/documents/kevin_final_draft.doc
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Keyword(s): Maternal Employment; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Socioeconomic Status (SES)

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper uses the NLSY79 to link mothers to their children and exploit detailed information on child, mother and household characteristics, as well as supplemental area, paternal and income information. Maternal employment was found to have a small, statistically insignificant effect on achievement test scores. The estimates show that maternal employment during the first five years of a child's life has a negative effect on achievement test scores and recent maternal employment has a positive effect, but both estimates are statistically insignificant. The results do not show a significant difference in effects of maternal employment for daughters and sons. The most compelling results occur when maternal employment effects are examined for advantaged and disadvantaged children separately. The estimates provide evidence of neutral and harmful effects of maternal employment for children in higher SES families and neutral and beneficial effects for children in lower SES families.
Bibliography Citation
Welding, Kevin. Maternal Employment and Academic Achievement: An Empirical Project. Masters Thesis, Applied Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, May 2006..