TY  - GEN
AB  - Judging from the abundant and expanding literature on educational inequalities, the apparent consensus
is that divergent educational outcomes of individuals can be explained by two main mechanisms: classspecific
differences in children’s skills (primary effects) and educational choices, net of skills
(secondary effects). Contrary to the widespread agreement that primary effects stem from differences in
parental tangible and cultural resources and that secondary effects result from decisions made based on
class-specific constraints, we contend that parents across social classes invest in their children
differently for equivalent levels of children’s perceived skills—thus, primary effects and secondary
effects work in similar ways. Formulating a rational-choice model of primary effects, we hypothesize
that parental investments in children’s skills during the early stages of their life course are stratified
according to the combined effects of relative risk aversion and cumulative advantage. Using data from
the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and controlling for parental resources, we tested this
hypothesis by asking whether mothers spend more or less time engaged in cognitively stimulating
activities with their preschool children at age 5 to 6 depending on the child’s observed past language
skills and the parents’ social class. Ordinary least squares estimates suggest that mothers’ activities with
their children not only are stratified across social classes but also reflect a class-specific reaction to
children’s observed past ability consistent with our assumed mechanisms. Lower-class mothers invest
in cognitively stimulating activities in a selective way: the higher the perceived ability of the child, the
more effort is invested in these activities; in contrast, higher-class mothers do not differentiate their
investment according to their child’s observed ability. Level of maternal education and extent of child
care support in the household have an additional positive impact on levels of activity. Implications of
the results and possible extensions of the model are discussed.
DA  - 2014
KW  - primary effects
KW  - secondary effects
KW  - relative risk aversion
KW  - cumulative advantage
KW  - skill development
KW  - parental investments
LA  - eng
PY  - 2014
SN  - 2193-9624
TI  - Opening the Black Box of Primary Effects: Relative Risk Aversion and Maternal Time Investments in Preschool Children
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0070-pub-27091452
Y2  - 2024-11-25T05:04:23
ER  -