Parental Care, Children’s Cognitive Abilities and Economic Growth: The Role of Fathers

摘要

Human capital is a key determinant of economic growth. Parents’ involvement during childhood is a predictor of educational attainment later in life. Thus, time devoted by parents to childcare is an important productive activity for society. This paper presents a model in which parental childcare is a key factor in determining children’s cognitive abilities. Parents’ must allocate their time between paid job and childcare. Because of diminishing return, the optimal allocation of parents’ time requires both parents to spend some time in childcare. Since a suboptimal allocation of time has implications both for children's cognitive abilities and for economic growth, our result has important policy implications.