Labor Economics Commons^™

Child Cognitive Achievement Gaps: The Role Of Family Structure And Maternal Locus Of Control In Parental Investment, Nalinda K. Murray

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Little exploration has been done to determine the impact of family structure on parental investment decisions and how gaps in children’s cognitive achievement are affected in turn. To examine the role of family structure, this paper estimates the production function for children’s cognitive achievement using a value-added specification with instrumental variables estimation. A novel feature of this research is that variation in family structure and maternal locus of control are exploited in an effort to account for the endogeneity of parental investment and children’s cognitive performance. Applying my methodology to data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and …