Time and Money spent on Children: Effect of the (Grand)Parents’ Education and Substitution within Time Allocations

This paper looks at the link between education of both partners and the time and money they spend on their children. Taking advantage of detailed microdata, it goes one step further than most previous studies as we control for the time constraint faced by the individuals, as well as interdependencies in the time spent in various activities by partners. This is done by performing Seemingly Unrelated Regressions. We see that, while the division of time between men and women is still gendered, it gets more egalitarian when the individuals have a high level of education. Concerning the investments in children, we find that children with parents with a low level of education suffer from less investments from their parents both in terms of time and money. Overall, our results seem to back up the gender ideology theory with education driving the transition from conservative to more egalitarian gender ideology and to be transmitted across generations with grandparents serving as gendered role models for the parents.