[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hka/wpaper/2022-045.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Parental Beliefs, Perceived Health Risks, and Time Investment in Children: Evidence from COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriella Conti

    (University College London)

  • Michele Giannola

    (University of Naples Federico II)

  • Alessandro Toppeta

    (University College London)

Abstract
When deciding how to allocate their time among different types of investment in their children, parents weigh up the perceived benefits and costs of different activities. During the COVID-19 outbreak parents had to consider a new cost dimension when making this decision: the perceived health risks associated with contracting the virus. What role did parental beliefs about risks and returns play for the allocation of time with children during the pandemic? We answer this question by collecting rich data on a sample of first-time parents in England during the first lockdown, including elicitation of perceived risks and returns to different activities via hypothetical scenarios. We find that parents perceive their own time investment to be (i) more productive and (ii) less risky than the time spent by their children in formal childcare or with peers. Using open-ended questions about their pandemic experience and detailed time use data on children’s daily activities, we then show that parental beliefs are predictive of actual investment choices, and are correlated with parental feelings derived from sentiment analysis. Lastly, we show that less educated parents perceive both lower returns and lower risks from investments, potentially causing a further widening of pre-existing inequalities in early years development, and suggesting the need for targeted informational interventions.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriella Conti & Michele Giannola & Alessandro Toppeta, 2022. "Parental Beliefs, Perceived Health Risks, and Time Investment in Children: Evidence from COVID-19," Working Papers 2022-045, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    • Handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2022-045
    Note: HI
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Conti_Giannola_Toppeta_2022_parental-beliefs-health-risks-time-invest-children-covid19.pdf
    File Function: First version, November 25, 2022
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniela Del Boca & Christopher Flinn & Matthew Wiswall, 2014. "Household Choices and Child Development," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(1), pages 137-185.
    2. Beatrice Ferrario & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2022. "Eliciting People's First-Order Concerns: Text Analysis of Open-Ended Survey Questions," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 112, pages 163-169, May.
    3. Agostinelli, Francesco & Doepke, Matthias & Sorrenti, Giuseppe & Zilibotti, Fabrizio, 2022. "When the great equalizer shuts down: Schools, peers, and parents in pandemic times," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    4. Musaddiq, Tareena & Stange, Kevin & Bacher-Hicks, Andrew & Goodman, Joshua, 2022. "The Pandemic’s effect on demand for public schools, homeschooling, and private schools," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michele Giannola, 2024. "Parental Investments and Intra-household Inequality in Child Human Capital: Evidence from a Survey Experiment," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(658), pages 671-727.
    2. Greta Morando & Sonkurt Sen & Almudena Sevilla, 2024. "Maternal Beliefs and Long-Term Child Skill Development," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2024_498, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Emily Beam & Priya Mukherjee & Laia Navarro-Sola, 2022. "Lowering Barriers to Remote Education: Experimental Impacts on Parental Responses and Learning," Working Papers 2022-030, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    2. David R. Agrawal & Aline Bütikofer, 2022. "Public finance in the era of the COVID-19 crisis," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 29(6), pages 1349-1372, December.
    3. Chen, Yefeng & Yang, Wenyuan & Luo, Gansong & Luo, Jun, 2024. "Choosing tournament for children: Parenting style and information intervention," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    4. Elizabeth M. Caucutt & Lance Lochner & Youngmin Park, 2017. "Correlation, Consumption, Confusion, or Constraints: Why Do Poor Children Perform so Poorly?," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 119(1), pages 102-147, January.
    5. Binelli, Chiara & Comi, Simona & Meschi, Elena & Pagani, Laura, 2024. "Every cloud has a silver lining: The role of study time and class recordings on university students’ performance during COVID-19," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 225(C), pages 305-328.
    6. Orazio Attanasio & Sarah Cattan & Emla Fitzsimons & Costas Meghir & Marta Rubio-Codina, 2020. "Estimating the Production Function for Human Capital: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Colombia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(1), pages 48-85, January.
    7. Emanuele Amodio & Michele Battisti & Antonio Francesco Gravina & Andrea Mario Lavezzi & Giuseppe Maggio, 2023. "School‐age vaccination, school openings and Covid‐19 diffusion," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(5), pages 1084-1100, May.
    8. Adamopoulou, Effrosyni & Greenwood, Jeremy & Guner, Nezih & Kopecky, Karen, 2024. "The Role of Friends in the Opioid Epidemic," CEPR Discussion Papers 18803, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. French, Eric Baird & O’Dea, Cormac & MacCuish, Jamie, 2021. "The Intergenerational Elasticity of Earnings: Exploring the Mechanisms," CEPR Discussion Papers 15975, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln & Dirk Krueger & André Kurmann & Etienne Lalé & Alexander Ludwig & Irina Popova, 2023. "The Fiscal and Welfare Effects of Policy Responses to the Covid-19 School Closures," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 71(1), pages 35-98, March.
    11. Daniela Boca & Daniela Piazzalunga & Chiara Pronzato, 2018. "The role of grandparenting in early childcare and child outcomes," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 477-512, June.
    12. Ylenia Brilli & Simone Moriconi, 2023. "Culture of Origin, Parenting, and Household Labor Supply," Working Papers 2023: 17, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    13. Svaleryd, Helena & Vlachos, Jonas, 2022. "COVID-19 and School Closures," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1008, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    14. Yekaterina Chzhen & Jennifer Symonds & Dympna Devine & Júlia Mikolai & Susan Harkness & Seaneen Sloan & Gabriela Martinez Sainz, 2022. "Learning in a Pandemic: Primary School children’s Emotional Engagement with Remote Schooling during the spring 2020 Covid-19 Lockdown in Ireland," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(4), pages 1517-1538, August.
    15. Richard Gearhart & Lyudmyla Sonchak-Ardan & Raphael Thibault, 2023. "The impact of minimum wage on parental time allocation to children: evidence from the American Time Use Survey," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 1019-1042, September.
    16. Fitzsimons, Emla & Malde, Bansi & Mesnard, Alice & Vera-Hernández, Marcos, 2016. "Nutrition, information and household behavior: Experimental evidence from Malawi," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 113-126.
    17. Daniela Del Boca & Chiara Monfardini & Cheti Nicoletti, 2012. "Self investments of adolescents and their cognitive development," Discussion Papers 12/24, Department of Economics, University of York.
    18. An, Zidong & Binder, Carola & Sheng, Xuguang Simon, 2023. "Gas price expectations of Chinese households," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    19. Harbatkin, Erica & Strunk, Katharine O. & McIlwain, Aliyah, 2023. "School turnaround in a pandemic: An examination of the outsized implications of COVID-19 on low-performing turnaround schools, districts, and their communities," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    20. Martin D Munk & Till Nikolka & Panu Poutvaara, 2022. "International family migration and the dual-earner model [On the origin of gender roles: women and the plough]," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(2), pages 263-287.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    parental beliefs; health risks; time investments; text data; COVID-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2022-045. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jennifer Pachon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mfichus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.