School Choice Maternal Employment and Child Achievement

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究将分析学校投入和父母投入之间的相互作用和相互依赖关系，作为儿童教育成就的决定因素。本研究考虑了学校和父母投入决策的两个重要维度：父母选择住在哪个上学区，母亲决定工作，作为母亲直接投入儿童教育时间的代理。建立了居住地点和母亲就业决定及其对儿童结局影响的行为模型。我们使用来自全国青年纵向调查的独特的纵向母婴数据与所有美国学校的详细数据相匹配，来估计理论模型的参数。对偏好和生产函数参数的估计将能够详细描述学校投入和母亲就业决定影响儿童的机制，以及政策对移徙、女性就业和儿童结果的影响。了解学校质量和家长行为影响儿童发展的机制，对科学、政策制定者和家长在为儿童分配资源方面的决策都很重要。现有研究通常孤立地分析学校特色和父母投入（如母亲就业）的重要性。由于两种类型的投入都不可能彼此独立地确定，因此教育生产函数规范中输入的遗漏很可能导致内生性偏差。这暗示了一个潜在的重要原因，在文献中发现的估计差异很大。这个研究项目应该有助于解决许多关于父母行为和学校投入对儿童成就的重要性的相互矛盾的估计。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This study will analyze the interactions and interdependencies between school inputs and parental inputs as determinants of a child's educational achievement. This study considers two important dimensions of school and parental input decisions: the parents' choice of which school attendance area to live in, and the mother's decision to work, as a proxy for maternal time directly devoted to child education. A behavioral model of residential location and maternal employment decisions and their effects on child outcomes is developed. Using unique, longitudinal, mother-child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth matched with detailed data on all U.S. schools, we estimate the parameters of the theoretical model. Estimates of the preference and production function parameters will make it possible to provide a detailed characterization of the mechanisms through which school inputs and maternal employment decisions affect children, and the effects of policy on migration, female employment and child outcomes. Understanding the mechanisms through which school quality and parental behaviors affect children's development is important for science, and for policy makers and parents in making decisions about the allocation of resources to children. Existing studies typically analyze the importance of school characteristics and parental inputs such as maternal employment in isolation. As both types of inputs are unlikely to be determined independently from each other, the omission of inputs from an educational production function specification is likely to result in endogeneity biases. This suggests a potentially important reason for the great variability in estimates found in the literature. This research project should help to resolve many of the conflicting estimates of the importance of parental behaviors and school inputs on child achievement.