The Economics of parenting style and child development : evidence from rural Thailand

This dissertation investigates the determinants of parenting style and the bidirectional relationship between parenting style and child outcomes in the context of rural Thai­land in two parts. The first part examines the socioeconomic determinants of parenting style in the context of a developing country using early childhood panel data from rural Thailand. Our key findings are that more patient caregivers tend to be more authoritative than authoritarian, caregivers are more likely to be authoritative than authoritarian when they observe better behavior from their children, and caregivers exhibit more authoritarian than authoritative parenting if they perceive the community to be more dangerous. We also find that families with fewer resources, proxied by wealth, marital status, and parental absence, are more likely to be authoritarian. The second part focuses on the role of parenting style in child development. Our findings reveal that more authoritative relative to authoritarian parenting is posi­tively associated with self-regulation and behavioral skills in children. These findings persisted when the relationship was estimated by considering community risk as an IV for parenting style. Relating cognitive skills, authoritative relative to authoritar­ian parenting is found to be positively associated with working memory. We also find that wealth and the caregiver's education were positively associated with the child's working memory. Moreover, while wealth promoted the positive impact of authori­tative versus authoritarian parenting on child behavioral skills and working memory, the caregiver's education was insignificant for the former and achieved the opposite for the latter skill