Do parental time investments react to changes in child's skills and health?

Parental time investment decisions have been found to have important effects on child development; however, little is known about the response of parents to changes in their child's human capital across time. Using the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, we measure time investments considering the time young children spend, with or without parents, in different activities. By adopting a child fixed-effect instrumental variable estimation, we find that parents reinforce for high socio-emotional skills by spending more time socialising with their child and compensate for low cognitive skills by increasing the time the child spends in learning activities.