Abstract
Although many economists have explored adult decisions regarding human capital investments, the discipline has largely neglected the topic of human capital investments during childhood. There are at least two reasons for this. First, children are not fully developed, autonomous agents capable of making rational choices regarding their long-term benefits. In addition, much of the work associated with child rearing was (and largely, still is) performed by women inside the home. According to conventional wisdom, the raising of children is motivated by love and affection, not rational, reasoned responses to economic incentives. This lack of connection to the formal marketplace place has meant that this fundamental feature of human existence was remained outside the scope of economic research.
Matthias Doepke of Northwestern University and Fabrizio Zilibotti of Yale University make a significant contribution to this understudied realm of economic decision-making. The authors, both fathers themselves, are clear to point out that the aim of their book is not to provide guidance to parents. Rather, this book explores the motives of parents and tries to model the decisions they make. The scope of this book is impressive. Using an economic framework, the authors explain the recent “helicopter” parenting phenomenon (i.e., a heavily involved, time-intensive child-rearing approach), as well as how parenting practices have evolved throughout the course of history. Their conclusion is when it comes to parenting styles across countries and across time, not only do economic forces matter, they matter a lot.
Chapter 1 explains the economic framework to the nonexpert. Parents, like all people, face constraints with respect to time, skills, and money. Within these constraints, parents make choices to pursue their objectives. The authors argue that, with few exceptions, parents seek to do what is best for their children in the present (make them happy now) as well as in the future (set them up to have a successful adult life). Given this (nearly) universal parenting objective, the central undertaking of Doepke and Zilibotti is to determine whether changes in parenting styles across space and time are linked to changes in parents’ incentives and constraints.
Throughout the book, the authors rely on Diana Baumrind’s (1966, 1967) identification of three distinct parenting styles. Chapter 1 clearly defines each of these parenting styles and includes real-world scenarios as well as literary examples of each. Authoritarian parents “demand obedience from their children and exercise strict control” (p. 24); permissive parents “follow a laissez-faire approach and let children make their own choices, encouraging their independence” (p. 27); authoritative parenting occupies the middle ground between these two extremes. Unlike authoritarian parents who seek to influence their children’s choices through “command and discipline,” authoritative parents pursue the same objective through “reasoning and attempting to shape their values” (p. 30). The authors often group authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles together under the category of “intensive parenting.” As the authors explain, “The key distinction is that intensive parents interfere with their children’s choices, while permissive parents do not” (p. 40).
Using time use survey data from a sample of developed countries, the authors document that today’s parents are spending much more time with their children than previous generations and that this trend is even more pronounced for college-educated parents, particularly mothers. From their analysis, the perception that more intensive, “helicopter” parenting styles are becoming more widespread is a valid one. Furthermore, intensive parenting styles produce better educational outcomes. Cross-national evidence from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows that 15-year-olds whose parents adopt more intensive parenting styles outperform their peers in math, reading, and science. Even after controlling for both country fixed effects and parental education levels, the difference is substantial. The authors are careful to point out that readers should be cautious about interpreting their findings as casual. Instead, they conclude “an intensive parenting style is associated with a significant improvement in school performance” (p. 76).
After describing these different parenting styles and establishing that these differences matter, the authors move on to the most compelling argument of the book. The authors contend that although a country’s political history, ethnic diversity, and culture play a role, economic factors are “remarkably successful at predicting how parents behave in different countries around the globe” (p. 85). Using data from the World Values Survey (WVS), Doepke and Zilibotti show that parenting styles differ dramatically across countries. The survey asks respondents which attitudes or values they regard as most important for children to learn at home. Parents in Scandinavia, and to a lesser extent in Germany and Switzerland, emphasize independence and imagination as important values to impart to children. Thus, parents in these countries tend to take a permissive approach to parenting. Respondents from Russia, China, Turkey, and the United States place a lower importance on these characteristics and instead place a greater emphasis on teaching children to work hard. Parents in these countries are more likely to practice authoritarian or authoritative parenting styles. The obvious question is why these parenting values differ around the world. The authors’ answer is differences in parenting style across countries are largely driven by differences in the level of income inequality.
Measuring income inequality using both the Gini coefficient and the ratio of the 90th to 10th percentile of the earnings distribution, a clear pattern emerges. In countries with high levels of income inequality, parents are much more likely to adopt an authoritative parenting style. Parents residing in countries where income inequality is low are more likely to practice permissive parenting styles. Furthermore, this same pattern is evident when one considers changes in the popularity of the authoritative parenting style within each country. (France and Spain are notable exceptions to this general pattern; see pp. 105–106 for a discussion of these outlier countries). The authors highlight the U.S. experience to demonstrate the evolution of parenting styles over time. From 1995 to 2011, income inequality in the United States sharply increased. During this same period, the popularity of the authoritative parenting style also increased. In 1995, 39% of parents were practicing this parenting style; by 2011, this share had increased to 53% (pp. 109–110).
Acknowledging that these cross-country parenting differences could be in part due to cultural heterogeneity, Doepke and Zilibotti perform a similar analysis using data on individuals from the WVS. The multinomial logistic regression with country fixed effects yields similar results as the country-level analysis: “. . .when a country becomes more unequal, parents of identical socioeconomic characteristics turn significantly less permissive, significantly more authoritative, and somewhat more authoritarian” (p. 111). The authors predict that if income inequality continues to increase in countries around the world, we can expect it to coincide with a rise in intensive, helicopter-style parenting approaches.
The motivation behind this parenting behavior is understandable. In unequal societies, making choices to yield desirable outcomes for one’s children is of utmost importance. In these environments, if a child does not earn good grades and does not participate in a variety of extracurricular activities, it is unlikely he or she will gain admittance to the right college or university. This lack of access to the right kind of postsecondary education can mean a lifetime of economic struggle and hardship. Consider instead a society where doctors and lawyers earn more, but not substantially more, than mechanics and production workers. In this context, a child’s educational outcomes are less likely to have sizable and lasting economic consequences when they reach adulthood. A less ambitious child can still enjoy middle-class status and security. It is easy to comprehend how this type of environment would be conducive to a more relaxed approach to parenting. Today, more and more societies are experiencing larger gaps between the economic outcomes of those who earned college degrees and those who did not. Rising levels of economic inequality has increased the perceived rewards of intensive parenting styles, and thus, more parents around the world are adopting the authoritative parenting approach.
In Chapter 4, the authors examine the broader social implications of this link between parenting style and inequality. Although the intensive parenting style is becoming more popular across the social spectrum, it has become especially popular with more educated and higher income parents. Of course, it is higher income households that can afford music lessons and sports activities for their children. An investment of time is also required to adopt this parenting style. Again, parents who are more educated tend to have the means, ability, and desire to make this commitment. For example, between 2003 and 2006, mothers who had completed a bachelor’s degree spent on average 4 more hours on child care per week compared with mothers with only a high school education. Furthermore, educated, middle-class parents tend to choose time-intensive enrichment activities when spending time with their kids, whereas parents from humbler backgrounds are less engaged (p. 130). Evidence supports the claim that these parenting differences matter. Using data from the United Kingdom and the United States, Doepke and Zilibotti show that the authoritative parenting style is “conducive to upward mobility of both education and occupational choice” (p. 136) for children raised in these homes.
The authors use this evidence to frame the most important issue raised in the book. As the gap between rich and poor increases in countries around the world, so does the gap in parenting styles. Better educated, higher income parents are much more likely to adopt intensive parenting styles compared with parents with less education and lower incomes. Because intensive parenting styles are associated with upward social mobility, this gap in parenting style potentially contributes to persistent, unequal outcomes for children of different socioeconomic backgrounds. The authors refer to this possibility as a “parenting trap” and use this example to explain the potential “self-reinforcing” nature of this problem: . . . if the parenting gap increases in response to higher inequality, the spread between the average educational attainments of children from the two ends of the social spectrum will also increase. This would lower social mobility and propagate high inequality in the next generation. (p. 148)
The authors identify two types of public policy interventions that might reduce the risk of falling into this parenting trap. The first would address the underlying inequality that is at the root of the parenting gap and includes traditional fiscal and social policies such as progressive taxation and general income transfers. The second type of interventions focuses on supporting disadvantaged children through early childhood intervention programs such as subsidized provision of high-quality child care.
Part Two presents an exploration of historical changes in child rearing practices. The authors acknowledge that although numerous factors (religion being chief among them) contributed to the popularity of the authoritarian parenting style (one characterized by obedience and lack of independence) before the Industrial Revolution, incentives also played an important role. In the past, decisions about schooling and work varied little from one generation to the next. And generations relied upon each other more intensively than now for support. Because most children followed in the occupational path of their parents, the benefits of raising independent children were low and obedience among children was highly valued. Only when economies started to modernize and the occupational paths of children became much less certain did parents start to encourage independence in their children and reduced the emphasis on obedience. This is one reason why after World War II, we started seeing a decline in the popularity of authoritarian parenting and an increase in permissive parenting. This section of the book also examines the role of economic incentives in explaining why parenting styles sometimes vary according to the gender of child, declining family sizes, and the reduction of child labor.
In Part Three, the authors analyze the role of the school system in explaining the variation in parenting styles around the world. In many countries, the economic environment and the structure of the school system tend to reinforce each other. For example, Chinese students must pass a series of high-stakes examinations as a prerequisite to a college education. This incentivizes Chinese parents, particularly wealthy ones, to adopt intensive parenting styles to ensure their children are on the right path for success. The authors conclude the book by describing how they believe parenting styles will evolve in the future. Well-meaning parents responding to economic conditions, the authors predict, will continue to adopt more intensive parenting techniques to position their children to succeed in an increasingly unequal world.
This is an impressive, far-reaching book. Packed with evidence from the WVS, PISA, and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), Part One is the strongest, best-supported section of the book and presents new and important insights into how parenting decisions help determine social equality and mobility within a society. Parts Two and Three drift a bit outside the scope of their argument and rely on a few high-profile examples (parenting style of Andrew Carnegie, for instance) to make their case. As an economist and parent myself, I found their arguments overall to be innovative, convincing, and fun to read. For anyone interested in better understanding the links between parenting decisions and economic outcomes, this book is highly recommended. Both the expert (whether parenting or economic) and the casual reader will enjoy reading this remarkable book.