Parental Education and Child Learning: Investing in Goods and Time

Phil Brown, University of Michigan

Children of more educated parents have been shown to outperform their peers on standardized tests, an outcome often attributed to more educated parents investing more in their children's human capital accumulation. However, neither the form of this investment nor the extent to which it explains the relationship between parental education and child learning is well understood. Using unique data from China, this paper examines how parental education impacts the household's provision of time and goods used in children's learning and the extent to which these investments may explain the relationship between parental education and child learning. I find that more educated parents allocate greater levels of both goods and time to their children's human capital accumulation. In addition, controlling for investments in goods and time reduces the estimated effects of parental education on children's learning.