Abstract
It is well acknowledged that early life skills have profound implications on a variety of later life outcomes. Evidence has also shown that the levels of these skills diverge earlier than school age for children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and remain stable throughout the schooling years. This paper focuses on child development before age 6, and tries to determine whether time allocation has an impact on child skill formation during this critical development stage.
I find that in general, children's cognitive skills at both age 3 and 5 are most sensitive to different time inputs around age 3; non-cognitive skills at age 3 are mostly affected by parenting styles around age 3; and non-cognitive skills at age 5 are neither affected by specific time inputs nor by parenting styles - they are mainly affected by non-cognitive skills at age 3. The findings indicate that there exist heterogeneous stages in child skill development from birth to age 5. Age 3 seems to be the period when children develop more rapidly and are more sensitive to investments from parents within this time window.