The aim of this paper is to explore whether the ill-health of a sibling affects a (healthy) child’s cognitive and non-cognitive development. I use data from the Panel of Income Study Dynamics (PSID), and adopt a propensity score matching approach to compare families where one of the siblings is affected by a physical or mental illness with families where all the children are healthy. I then measure the healthy child’s cognitive development using the Woodcock Johnson Test, and his non-cognitive skills with the Big Five Personality Traits. The results show that healthy children living with an ill sibling do not experience adverse effects in terms of cognitive development, but experience an increase in Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness and Extraversion. I then examine the possible mechanisms which may mediate the effect of a sibling ill-health on the healthy child. I explore differences in parental quality time with the children, parental stimuli given to the children, parental attitudes and parental distress. I do not find any difference in parental quality time with the children. The main difference between families where one of the children is ill and families with all healthy children is that the former experience both an increase in maternal warmth and in parental distress, with some differences at the gender level. These findings confirm the existence of a strong link between a child non-cognitive skills and parental attitudes or mental health emphasised by the psychological and medical literature.
Presented by:
Francesca Marino (University of Padova)
Date & time:
July 1, 2015 11:00 am - July 1, 2015 12:00 pm
Venue:
Large Seminar Room (2N2.4.16)
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