Frauke H. Peter, C. Katharina Spieß
As presented in recent literature (see e.g. Cunha and Heckman 2007, 2009), parental environment considerably influences child development. This is particularly true for the early years. In this paper we focus on the stability of the parental environment. We analyze partner and employment changes for mothers with children aged two to six. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) to examine the association between changes in parental environments and child outcomes. Preliminary results show a correlation between multiple partner changes and the socio-emotional behavior of five-to-six-year-olds. The analysis demonstrates a significant association between partner changes and child outcome of preschoolers: This accounts for children who have experienced a separation and then a new partner comes into the household. Additionally, we depict that 'exogenous' changes in maternal employment (e.g. employment exits) are negatively correlated with preschoolers' prosocial behavior. We find a negative correlation between the adaptive behavior of two-to-three-year-olds and mothers employment status: Children of mothers that are continuously employed are more developed in some of the skill domains we capture.
JEL-Classification: J10;J12;J13
Keywords: family structure, child development, joblessness, skills
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