Mothers Working during Preschool Years and Child Skills: Does Income Compensate?

Increasing mother’s labor supply during a child’s preschool years may reduce time investments, yielding negative direct effect on midchildhood and teenage outcomes. But as work hours increase, income will rise. Can compensate for the of hours? Our mediation analysis exploits exogenous variation in both family income. Results suggest negative, insignificant from increasing child test scores. However, positive mediating creates total scores (26% standard deviation) 10-hour increase weekly years.