The Interaction between Parents and Children: three Essays on Family Economics

This thesis focuses on two aspects of parent-child interactions. First, in Chapter 2, I study the effect of attending daycare at age 0-2 on children's cognitive development at age 8 in the Netherlands. Despite the expanding evidence on the desirable effects of child care at age 3-6 on child outcomes, there is less evidence on the effect of child care at very young ages. After establishing the relationship between parents and children at a very young age, in Chapter 3 this thesis turns to the adulthood stage. Chapter 3 explores the impact of parents’ housing wealth on children’s marriage prospects at marriageable ages in China. The hypothesis is that in an economy with an excess supply of males in the marriage market, such as China, parental housing wealth acts as a signal in the marriage market:. Finally, I explore the impact of children on their parents’ wellbeing at older ages. In Chapter 4, I investigate the effect of the death of a child on parents’ physical and mental wellbeing in China. With the rapid aging of the population and the lack of a developed social security system in China, it is important to understand the effect of losing a child on individual wellbeing.