Maternal Occupation-Specific Skills and Children’s Cognitive Development

This article hypothesizes that maternal occupation-specific skills are associated with children’s cognitive development over and above parents’ other human, financial social capital. Data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study on 13,543 children were complemented occupation-level data (n = 79) British Skills Surveys aggregate measures of mothers’ (literacy, numeracy, problem-solving, verbal physical). We did not find any association between non-verbal ability (inductive reasoning, spatial awareness) at age five when conditioning covariates. However, (e.g. presentation skills) positively (Naming Vocabulary) parental resources. By contrast, physical use strength) negatively abilities. Albeit effect sizes small, contribute to stratification in net