The Impact of New Siblings in Two-Parent Households: More or Less Specialized Parental Time?

Jorge I. Ugaz, University of Chicago
Jonathan Guryan, Northwestern University

Little is known about how patterns of parental time investments in children change as family size grows. We use time diary data from approximately 2500 children in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement to explore how the birth of a new sibling (an event which occurs in 19% of the sample) between 1997 and 2002 affects patterns of parental time investment and, in particular, the level of specialization of that time spent. Our preliminary results show that parental time is affected, with respect to its amount, composition and specialization level, when a new child is born; these results also show that such changes in the patterns of parental time investment are different for the mother and the father, and that the gender of the index child plays an important role in who adjusts, and how, and in which type of activities.