Parental investment in their children’s education

This paper estimates for a sample of Mexican families a structural collective model of household labor supply with children and home production. The framework of Blundell, Chiappori, and Meghir (2005) is used to address how household allocations are affected by the intra-household decision-making process when both parents care for their children’s welfare, particularly their education. In households with characteristics equal to the average of the sample, more household resources are directed toward children’s education when the balance of bargaining power changes in favor of fathers instead of mothers. Moreover, in spite of mothers having a larger estimated marginal willingness to pay than fathers for resources associated with children’s utility, more (less) expenditures and time would be dedicated to children when fathers. bargaining power increases (decreases) exogenously. These results draw attention to the design of targeting strategies which presumes that mothers care more for children than fathers, being possible to be less effective in some cases than if it had been focused on augment fathers’power.