Investing in the future
The early years of a child’s life are highly formative, and while parents are typically the primary care-givers, the state often provides support to young families through policies such as subsidised childcare. How do families respond to public policies? Does their response depend on their background? These questions lie at the core of Dr Hans Sievertsen’s research.
The early years of a child’s life are highly formative, and parents typically devote enormous effort to nurturing their children, for example by providing nutritious meals, reading stories and taking them to toddler groups. Alongside these parental investments in children, many European governments also provide some level of support to families.
“Some countries offer child benefit and tax credits to families with young children, while most governments subsidise childcare to some degree. Certain governments also have health programmes specifically targeted at young families, such as the nurse home visiting programme (NHV) in Denmark,” outlines Dr Hans Sievertsen, a researcher at VIVE, the Danish Centre for Social Science Research.
As Principal Investigator of a research project based at VIVE, Dr Sievertsen is looking at the relationship between the way parents support their children and public policy, building on data from tax registries, surveys and nursing records. “We want to look at how families respond to public policies. What do families do if child benefit is increased? Does their response depend on their background?” he explains. There are three main strands to this research. One part of the project is largely descriptive, with Dr Sievertsen and his colleagues seeking to describe existing inequalities and their effects on the very early stages of family life following childbirth, using data from Denmark.
“There for example we look at the relationship between birth weight and parental income for example, or the extent to which the number of contacts with a nurse in the first year depends on the parents’ income. This is purely descriptive and is essentially about setting the stage; how different are families? How often does a high-income family see a nurse in comparison to a low-income family?” he says. The project team are also looking at health investments. “This covers essentially the first year of a child’s life, and there we look to see how families respond to a home visit by a nurse,” continues Dr Sievertsen. “The third main element of the project is focused on broader public policies, like child benefit, which starts immediately after childbirth. Here, we’re looking at data on the first three years after childbirth.”
Researchers in the project are using three sources of data in this work, one of which is administrative records from tax registries, which provide information on people’s incomes and their working patterns. This can then be linked to their educational records and other outcomes, on which a wealth of data has been recorded in Denmark. “There is a very good research infrastructure in Denmark,” stresses Dr Sievertsen. This information is combined with two other sources of data unique to the
Working patterns
This research involves looking at how parents respond to public policy in terms of their working patterns. In low-income families for example, increased levels of financial support may allow one or both parents to adjust their working patterns, potentially allowing them to increase the amount of time they can spend with their children. “We can see that when low-income families receive more child benefit, it allows the mother and father
“We want to look at how families respond to public policies. What do families do if child benefit is increased? Does their response depend on their background?”
project. “We did two big surveys on around 60,000 children in 2017 and 2020, where we went out and asked parents questions on things like how much breastfeeding they did. We also did some screening questions about the child’s development,” says Dr Sievertsen. “The third source of data is nursing records from the NHV programme. In Denmark every family is visited by a nurse a few weeks after childbirth, who comes to the family, checks how things are going, and offers advice and guidance. We have access to these records –which are anonymised – and we are using them in our research.”
to re-allocate their labour supply,” says Dr Sievertsen. However, when child benefit is reduced to a lower level the father often starts to work more to compensate, which leads to some changes, as Dr Sievertsen explains. “The child will then spend more time with their mother, because the father is working to earn money,” he continues. “From the nurse records we can see that when lowincome families receive less child benefit, the nurse’ screening is more likely to indicate maternal mental health challenges. We have also found differences in breast-feeding behaviour and other outcomes, so we can
see that families do certain things differently when they have less money.”
The project is primarily focused on the impact of investments in children during their early years, yet these investments – or the lack of them – may have a long-term impact, for example on their later educational attainment. This is a topic that Dr Sievertsen is exploring. “We are working on linking the project on child benefit to school test results. We want to investigate whether there is a relationship between how a child does in school and the amount of child benefit their parents received in their early years,” he outlines. There is a large body of research in health and social sciences looking at the effects of dramatic shocks or events in early life on the subsequent lifecourse, yet it can be difficult to assess the impact of smaller, more regular shocks that may then become part of an individual’s mental background. “Many things happen to children, they are exposed to shocks all the time. So how can we look at how one shock may affect them
later in life?” asks Dr Sievertsen.”If something dramatic happens to a child – like witnessing violence – and the parents have the means, then often they will both try to compensate for the negative effects.”
A lack of resources and access to education and cultural opportunities may seem trivial by comparison, but parents may be more constrained in their ability to compensate. This may then have long-term effects on the child, an issue Dr Sievertsen plans to explore further in future. “We are in the process of working on several sub-projects and research papers,” he says. This research could also help policy-makers understand the likely impact of changes to child benefit or nursing programmes, and Dr Sievertsen is keen to bring the project’s findings to wider attention. “We want to give policy-makers the knowledge they need to decide how they want to design the nursing programme and the child benefit system for example,” he continues.
FamIly backgrounD, early InveSTmenT polIcIeS, anD parenTal InveSTmenTS project objectives
This project combines data from administrative records, nurse records, and surveys to examine how public policies—such as healthcare, childcare, and financial support for new families—interact with parental behaviors to shape child development.
project Funding
Funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark, official title “Family background, early investment policies, and parental investments”. Amount: 5,124,672 DKK. Grant: 0218-00003B.
project partners
Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen
contact Details
Project Coordinator, Dr Hans Sievertsen
Professor MSO
VIVE – The Danish Centre for Social Science Copenhagen Herluf Trolles Gade 11 1052 Copenhagen K Denmark
T: +45 29 65 84 75
e: hhs@vive.dk W: www.hhsievertsen.net
Dr Hans Sievertsen is a professor with special responsibilities at VIVE, the Danish Center for Social Science Research and an associate professor at the School of Economics, University of Bristol. He is an applied micro-economist working on topics, including education, health, gender and inequality.
