Are Children's Socio-Emotional Skills Shaped by Parental Health Shocks?

Research output: Working paperResearch

Child skills are shaped by parental investments. When parents experience a health shock, their investments and therefore their children's skills may be affected. This paper estimates causal effects of severe parental health shocks on child socio-emotional skills. Drawing on a large-scale survey linked to hospital records, we find that socio-emotional skills of 11-16 year-olds are robust to parental health shocks, with the exception of significant but very small reductions in Conscientiousness. We study short-run effects with a child-fixed effects model, and dynamics around the shocks with event studies. A sibling comparison suggests some long-run build-up of effects of early shocks.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages48
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Aug 2020
SeriesCEBI Working Paper Series
Number21/20

ID: 248805610