Mothers Education: An Empirical Analysis

METHODOLOGY

The empirical analysis follows two steps. In the first step, we analyse the association between formal childcare and child cognitive outcomes, allowing the effect of formal childcare to be different for children from different family backgrounds. We control for a large number of control variables (regarding the child, the mother, the father, the household). In the second step, we simulate how an increase in formal childcare attendance can affect inequalities across children.

4.1 The different effect of formal care by mothers’ education

First, we estimate the following equation:

where Y_ia refers to a vector of cognitive outcomes of the child i when she is a years old (a=3,5,7), K_i9 is a vector of early child endowment (motion,

We consider the child's characteristics (being British, being a girl, birthweight, whether s/he was breastfed for at least 1 month, accidents at home, having been in a hospital, and three indicators of child development1); household's characteristics (other siblings, weekly equivalent income, if parents meet friends at least once a week, region of residence); mother's characteristics (age, hours of work per week, whether she held a job while pregnant, monthly wage, not employed, whether she experienced post–partum depression, a factor summarizing her feelings of tiredness and concern, a factor summarizing her feelings of irritability, whether she had lived with a single mother during childhood, whether she has a chronic illness, cigarettes smoked per day, whether she drinks at least once a week); father's characteristics (whether he is present, hours of work per week, monthly wage, a factor summarizing his feelings of tiredness and concern, a factor summarizing his feelings of irritability, whether he had lived with a single mother during childhood, cigarettes smoked per day, whether he drinks at least once a

BBCS–R measures the comprehension of 308 functionally relevant educational concepts in 11 subtests or concept categories. Only 6 subsets have been implemented in the MCS: colours (primary and basic), letters (knowledge of upper– or lower– case letters), numbers/counting (single and double–digits numbers and assigning a number to a set of objects), sizes (concepts that describe one, two and three dimensions), comparisons (the ability to match or differentiate objects), and shapes (including lines, circles, squares, cubes, and pyramids). The Naming Vocabulary Verbal test assesses the spoken vocabulary of the child. Children are shown individual test items from booklets of colourful pictures of objects and asked to name the objects. The scale measures language ability, but picture recognition is also crucial. Low scores may also reflect reluctance to speak. For the Picture Similarity test, children are shown a row of 4 pictures on a page and asked to place a card with a fifth picture under the picture most similar to it. This assessment measures children’s problem solving