Parental Investments in Children: How Educational Homogamy and Bargaining Affect Time Allocation *

Distinguishing between developmental and non-developmental care, we examine how educational attainment, marital homogamy and spouses' relative bargaining power influence parents' time investment in their children. We exploit a unique couple-based time diary study for Denmark (n=489) that should yield more reliable estimation than in standard time use studies. We find that developmental care time is correlated with parents' education. We also find gendered parenting behaviour, but the presence of boys influences fathers' time dedication only among the less educated. We break new ground by emphasizing the importance of marital homogamy which reduces couple specialization, but only among the highly educated. To the extent that parental stimulation is decisive for child outcomes, our findings suggest the persistence of important inequalities. These emerge through our special attention to behavioural differences across the educational distribution among households. 3 The link between childhood conditions and later life chances has received intense scholarly attention in recent years with the majority of studies concluding that family attributes matter far more than neighbourhoods or schools and, moreover, that early childhood intervention can be a very effective corrective for children from underprivileged backgrounds (Brooks-Gunn et al., Our study centers on parental time investment in their children since this is unquestionably key to the promotion of childrens' learning and welfare more generally (Bianchi et al., 2004; Stafford & Yeung, 2005). We distinguish developmental from non-developmental parenting time so as to highlight that type of caring that is most explicitly related to the stimulation of children's abilities. In line with most studies, we stress the importance of parents', and especially mothers', emphasize, the mother's education is particularly decisive for child outcomes. Both theory and research suggest that the relative bargaining power of partners influences household decision-find that strengthening mothers' bargaining position is beneficial for child-related expenditure. In our analyses, we examine how mothers' relative bargaining power affects both the distribution and intensity of parental caring. The 'boy-effect', emphasized by Lundberg et al. (2007a, 2007b), is expected to be minor but we argue that gendered preferences diverge across educational distributions, being more accentuated among less educated fathers. Unlike earlier studies we attach special importance to the role of marital homogamy. The reasoning stems from three considerations. One, it is well-documented that marital selection implies a concentration of Two, we expect homogamous couples to embrace less 4 specialization since their marginal productivities in either home or market production should be more similar. …