PARENTAL TIME INVESTMENTS AND INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF INEQUALITY

ended

High socio-economic status parents consistently produce high socio-economic status children. The question is how. The objective of PARENTIME is to develop new socio-economic theories that unpack the detailed mechanisms driving the inter-generational transmission of inequality. Because of data limitations and theoretical traditions, the literature has focused on a narrow conceptualization of parental time (limited to the quantity of time spent with children in different kinds of activities), and a narrow set of child outcomes (limited to educational outcomes and socio-behavioral outcomes during the early years). Thus, while the results from this literature are informative at documenting the phenomenon of inter-generational transmission of human capital, they remain silent about the mechanisms underlying the process. PARENTIME aims to close this gap. In PARENTIME I will take a theoretically-driven Big Data approach by linking large representative 24-hour diary survey data of parents and children with very comprehensive and detailed information on child outcomes from administrative data to: First, go beyond the quantity of parental time to explore the inter-connections between family members and their role in the child’s acquisition of human capital (i.e., the timing and sequence, co-presence, multi-tasking, and instantaneous parental enjoyment). Second, establish long-term effects of parental time investments by looking at a comprehensive set of child human capital measures all the way into the child’s adult life. Third, arrive at a well-coordinated scientific approach, starting at the micro-sequential level of parents and children’s everyday life and building progressively to a macro understanding of the (re)production of socio-economic inequality.