Increasing the Human Capital of Children in Latin American Countries: The Role of Parents’ Time in Childcare

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on the relationship between parents’ education and activities aimed at increasing the human capital of children (for example, educational childcare). Using time use surveys from Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia we find that in Mexico, Peru, and Colombia the level of education of both father and mother has a positive association with the time devoted to educational childcare, while in Ecuador only fathers’ level of education has a positive association with father’s time devoted to educational childcare. Furthermore, we find that the time devoted to educational childcare by parents is positively related in all four countries.

Acknowledgements

The data and STATA codes for the replication of our results are available upon request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Prior research in Latin America using time-use surveys are Campaña, Gimenez-Nadal and Molina (2015), who analyse gender differences in total work and show that these differences vary across countries, and Durán and Milosavljevic (2012), who forecast the demand for child and adult care of the population until 2050, showing that, while the demand for eldercare will increase in Latin America, the demand for childcare will decrease.

2. See Online Appendix B for a description of all the activities included in basic childcare and educational childcare.

3. The methodologies for the time use surveys used in this paper have been defined by the relevant institutes of statistics in each country: INEGI (National Institute of statistics and geography) in Mexico, INEI (National Institute of Statistics and Informatics) in Peru, DANE (National Administrative Department of statistics) in Colombia; and INEC (National Institute of statistics and censuses) in Ecuador. Lists of activities based on the following international classifications are used in the data collection: Peru (ICATUS, classification international activities of use of time); Mexico (CMAUT, classification of time use); Ecuador and Colombia (CAUTAL, classification of activities of the use of time for Latin America and the Caribbean). The four surveys are perfectly comparable, since the scheme from ICATUS is the benchmark for CMAUT and CAUTAL. For further details regarding the list of activities in these four countries, see Campaña et al. (2015).

4. Prior studies, such as Aguiar and Hurst (2007) and Gimenez-Nadal and Sevilla (2012) considered these aspects to restrict their sample in time-use studies. The Time Use Survey of Peru does not provide information on whether people are retired or not, but we know that the legal age of retirement is 65 years (Superintendency of Banking and Insurance of Peru), and thus we assume that people younger than 65 are not retired.

5. See Bianchi et al. (2006), Budig and Folbre (2004), Folbre and Bittman (2004), Guryan et al. (2008) and Sevilla-Sanz, Gimenez-Nadal, and Fernandez (2010) for an understanding of the various dimensions of childcare.

6. Although Guryan et al. (2008) and Gimenez-Nadal and Molina (2013) consider three categories of childcare (basic, education, and supervisory childcare), we consider only two types of childcare activities due to data limitations, as we cannot distnguish efficiently between education and supervisory childcare.

7. It is important to define the terms of employment status, since the time spent by parents with their children depends on the time available for work (Haas, 1999). Fathers or mothers with better work schedules, or if they are not working at all, may devote more time to childcare. Table A1 in the Online Appendix shows that the majority of fathers surveyed work full-time. Colombian mothers have the highest percentage of working full-time, at 31.62 per cent, while only 19.75 per cent of Mexican mothers work full-time. Regarding part-time work, Peruvian mothers present the highest percentage, at 42.85 per cent of the sample, while only 15.08 per cent of Ecuadorian mothers work part-time. Considering non-working mothers, 60 per cent of Mexican and Ecuadorean mothers fall into this category, followed by Colombian mothers, at 52.13 per cent, and Peruvian mothers, at 37.12 per cent.

8. An important point to consider is the number of children of the couple. Becker (1981) predicts that women with higher education will spend less time on household chores, so those women are likely to have fewer children because the opportunity costs involved in not participating in the labour market are higher, and the highest costs are for those who are more educated (Becker & Lewis, 1973). Bachu (1999) and Beets (1999) demonstrate that women with a relatively high level of education have fewer children than women with a comparatively low level of education. Table A2 in the Online Appendix shows that the average number of children decreases with the level of education for the four countries (with the level of education of the mother being more important than the level of education of the father, in terms of reducing the number of children) as parents with lower levels of education have more children compared to parents with higher levels of education. Thus, parents with higher levels of education devote more time to their children, but have fewer children, indicating that the time invested per child increases with the education of the parents, consistent with the quantity-quality trade-off theory.

9. Examples of studies estimating SUR systems are Connelly and Kimmel (2009), Kalenkoski et al. (2005), Kimmel and Connelly (2007), Gimenez-Nadal, Marcen, and Ortega (2010) and Gimenez-Nadal and Molina (2013).

10. This procedure is also performed by Gimenez-Nadal and Molina (2013) in their study for Spain and the UK.

11. The information comes from: Child Labour module of the National Survey of Occupation and Employment 2009 and IMSS (Mexican Institute of Social Security) for Mexico; Ministry of Labour and Employment Promotion and Superintendency of Banking and Insurance for Peru; Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador (2008) and IESS (Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security) for Ecuador; and Ministry of Labour for Colombia.

12. In the case of Mexico and Peru, we have no information on the indigenous origin of respondents, but these surveys provide information on whether the respondent speaks an indigenous language. We assign value ‘0’ to the indigenous variable if the respondent does not speak an indigenous language, and value ‘1’ if the respondent speaks an indigenous language. In Colombia and Ecuador, respondents are asked to identify themselves according to their indigenous origin, so that we assign to the indigenous variable value ‘0’ if the respondent does not identify himself/herself as indigenous, and value ‘1’ if he/she is identified as such.

Additional information

Funding

This paper has benefited from funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economics [Project ECO2012-34828] and the predoctoral grant, awarded by the Government of Aragon in Spain, co-financed by the European Social Fund (BOA, 2 December 2014).