Parenting Types
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Authors
Rauh, C.
Renée, L.
Abstract
In this paper we measure parenting behavior through unsupervised machine learning in a panel following children from age 5 to 29 months. The algorithm classifies parents into two distinct behavioral types: "active" and "laissez-faire". Parents of the active type tend to respond to their children's expressions and describe to children features of their environment, while parents of the laissez-faire type are less likely to engage with their children. We find that parents' types are persistent over time and are systematically related to socio-economic characteristics. More-over, children of active parents see their human capital improve relative to children of parents of the laissez-faire type.
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Keywords
Parenting styles, human capital, latent Dirichlet allocation, inequality, machine learning
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Publisher
Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge