Mother’s Company In Infancy,Accumulation Of Human Capital And Labor Market Performance

Human capital is the power source of economic growth and development of modern enterprises,and it is the first resource of national economic development.Individual human capital is closely related to the results of labor market.The research on the wage income of workers needs to go back to the earlier process of human capital accumulation.The rate of return on human capital investment gradually decreases with the increase of age.Early childhood development is of great significance to the formation and accumulation of human capital,among which the mother’s company is the key factor affecting children’s development.The extension of maternity leave will affect the accumulation of children’s human capital by increasing the mother’s time investment and changing the economic income,and then affect their future labor market performance.Based on the data of CFPS2018 and the exogenous impact of the reform of maternity leave policy in 1988,this paper identifies the provincial differences and birth date differences in the time that female workers should enjoy maternity leave,and estimates the impact of extended maternity leave on their children’s labor market performance by using the principles of intention-to-treat analysis and Difference-in-Difference method.This paper attempts to explore the influence path from three dimensions of human capital: cognitive ability,non cognitive ability and health status,which enriches the research results in the field of human capital in China,and also provides suggestions for the institutional arrangement of maternity leave time.The research has found that:(1)Due to the high employment rate and structural unemployment of the observation sample,the positive impact of prolonged maternity leave on the employment probability of the offspring is small and not significant.(2)The extension of maternity leave has a significant positive impact on the wage level and professional reputation of the offspring.The SIOPS score will increase by about 0.6points for each standard deviation of the maternal maternity leave.The maternal maternity leave days increase by 1%,and the children’s hourly wage will increase by 0.245%.These indicate that the increase of accompanying time caused by the extension of maternal maternity leave has more time investment effect on children than the loss of economic income.(3)The effect of extended maternity leave of highly educated mothers on the wages and occupational prestige of their offspring is stronger than that of low educated mothers.Boys have stronger reaction to non maternal care than girls.(4)Mothers’ time investment in their children will affect their labor market results through cognitive ability,non cognitive ability and health status,and the implementation of compulsory education law and the policy effect of college enrollment expansion do not affect the significant positive impact of prolonged maternity leave on the education level of their children.