Principal investigator: Eduarda Miller de Figueiredo
Article title: PARENTING WITH STYLE: ALTRUISM AND PATERNALISM INTERGENERATIONAL PREFERENCE TRANSMISSION
Article authors: Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti
Location of the intervention: OECD countries
Sample size: 66.632 observations
Sector: Education
Type of intervention: Effects of creative style
Variables of interest: Relative Risk Rates associated with inequality
Evaluation method: Experimental Evaluation (RCT)
Policy Problem
What drives the way parents raise their children? Can child-rearing be shaped by economic incentives and constraints? In this article, the authors construct a rational choice theory that accounts for variations in child-rearing among industrialized countries, in which the model considers that parents are driven by a combination of Beckerian altruism and paternalistic motives.
Beckerian altruism refers to a concern for the well-being of the child, while paternalism captures the extent to which parents can influence their children's choices by shaping their preferences or imposing restrictions on their choices. Thus, the constructed theory conjectures that disagreements about choices influence investment in human capital, and economic success is a key factor in the choice of parenting style.
According to Weinberg (2001), parents influence their children's behavior through financial incentives, and low-income parents, lacking access to such incentives, resort to authoritarian methods. Lizzeri and Siniscalchi (2008) state that parents with superior information about the consequences of certain actions can intervene to protect children from ill-informed choices.
Assessment Context
Parenting styles vary across countries with different levels of income inequality, educational attainment, redistributive policies, and institutional quality. Therefore, this study focuses on analyzing the correlation between inequality and parenting style choice. In more unequal societies, success and failure are associated with larger income gaps; thus, it is expected that parents will be more able to influence their children's development.
The anti-authoritarian period is linked to a low return on education; that is, in the 1960s and 1970s, economic inequality reached a historic low and there was little unemployment, so the return on forcing children to study was very low, giving children greater freedom and independence.
Therefore, the choice of parenting style depends on the interaction between parental preferences and the characteristics of the socioeconomic environment. The theory constructed is consistent with historical trends in parenting styles in industrialized countries; thus, authoritarian parenting, measured by practices such as corporal punishment, has decreased over time.
Policy Details
Through the classification of "parenting styles," the authors define the following styles (Baumrind, 1967):
- PermissiveParenting that allows children to make free choices according to their natural inclinations;
- AuthoritativeA type of fatherhood that attempts to mold the preferences of their children, inducing them to make choices that they deem necessary for their success in life.
- AuthoritariansParenting that restricts children's choices, directly imposing one's will on the child.
In the constructed model, authoritative fatherhood can instill a form of guilt that leads the child to avoid choices that the parents consider inappropriate.
The research used a sample that included all OECD countries.[1]This choice was made because all are similar in terms of overall developmental level and other aspects of culture and institution, factors that can influence parental choices. The parenting style measures are constructed using the... World Value Survey (WVS) where questions are asked in the style of: “Here is a list of qualities that children can be encouraged to learn at home. Which ones, if any, do you consider especially important? Choose up to five."
Methodology Details
Based on the research, proxies were created for the three parenting practices considering the quality most associated with the parenting style. The value most associated with the authoritarian style is obedience; therefore, all parents who marked obedience as a desired quality were labeled as "authoritarian." "Authoritative" parents were selected as those who were (i) not authoritarian and (ii) who mentioned hard work among the listed qualities. Finally, "permissive" parents are those who are neither authoritarian nor authoritative and (ii) list independence or imagination as important qualities.
The three categories are mutually exclusive, but not exhaustive; that is, some parents may not be associated with any category. Considering the total sample of 66.632 respondents, 27% are authoritarian, 30% are authoritative, 34% are permissive, and 9% of the sample was excluded because they were not classified into any category.
To conduct the study analysis, the authors analyzed the relative risk ratios (RRRs) associated with inequality using multinomial logistic regressions with fixed country effects. In addition, the authors controlled for age, age squared, religiosity, education (less than completed high school, completed high school, and higher education), and country GDP per capita.
Another analysis considered after-tax income, since if expectations regarding children's economic outcomes and exposure to risk drive parenting style choices, then the extent of taxation should also matter. Thus, (i) a measure of redistributive tax progressivity was considered. Andrew Young School of Policy Studies (2010) and (ii) a measure of social spending as a percentage of GDP.
Results
In analyzing the data in an initial stage, the authors observed that permissive parenting styles are negatively correlated with inequality, while authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles are positively correlated. For example, inequality is very low in Sweden and Norway, and these countries have higher percentages of permissive parents, while the United States has greater inequality and parents are more authoritative and authoritarian.
The effect found for religiosity demonstrated that religious parents are less permissive and more authoritarian than non-religious people. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that parents prepare their children for the world in which they expect them to live; that is, religious people believe that the world is regulated by an order that never changes and, therefore, they must transmit to their children a set of immutable values and truths. When considering the extent of taxation, the findings suggest that an increase in social spending or progressive taxation is associated with a significant decrease in the probability of authoritative and authoritarian parenting compared to permissive parenting styles. In other words, more redistribution makes parents more permissive.
Educational outcomes also demonstrated that the characteristics of the educational system affect parenting styles. In some countries, vertical learning and memorization of facts are emphasized in secondary education, and access to the best universities is through highly demanding exams. In such countries, parents have a stronger incentive to demand greater effort from their children during adolescence, which may take the form of an authoritative or authoritarian style. In countries with good institutions and strong protection of civil rights, parents can expect that children's natural inclinations will help them achieve success.
Figure 1: Parental Education and Approval of Corporal Punishment
It was also observed that increased parental education is associated with a lower propensity to be authoritarian and an increased propensity to be authoritative. Figure 1 even demonstrates that there is greater parental involvement in education and less education in the approval of corporal punishment when parents are more educated, while parents with lower levels of education are more likely to resort to authoritarian methods.
Lessons in Public Policy
The difference in parenting styles that parents impose on their children may be an effect of the economic environment; thus, the theory suggests that the authoritarian style decreases as economic development advances. There is evidence that in countries with less inequality, parents are more permissive and emphasize values such as independence and imagination, while in countries with high inequality, parents tend to adopt a more authoritarian parenting style.
Reference
DOEPKE, Matthias; ZILIBOTTI, Fabrizio. Parenting with style: Altruism and paternalism in intergenerational preference transmission. Econometrica, vol. 85, no. 5, p. 1331-1371, 2017.
[1] The sample includes: Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United States.
