NOM BLOG

Freakonomics: Stay-at-Home Mom Knows Best?

 

Via the blog Freakonomics, which writes about "The hidden side of everything":

Just how important is Mom during a child’s first year of life?  A new working paper by the economists Pedro CarneiroKatrine V. Løken, and Kjell G. Salvanes exploits a recent reform in Norway to answer that question.  The reform, which increased paid and unpaid maternity leave, “increased maternal leave on average by 4 months,” but had no effect on family income.  The authors found that more time with Mom led to lower high school dropout rates later on.

Photo: Kelly Crabtree

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