Do Maternal Investments in Human Capital Affect Childrens' Academic Achievement?

Abstract

Children of educated mothers fare better on a variety of educational outcomes. However, little research has been done on the effects of human capital investments undertaken by mothers with children at home. Such investments have a theoretically ambiguous effect on child outcomes, since human capital investment reduces time spent with children but may have positive spillover effects on child investment. Using childand sibling-fixed effects models to deal with unobserved heterogeneity, we find that cumulative maternal schooling undertaken during a child's lifetime has significant positive effects on child outcomes, and that negative time allocation effects are minimal.