Educational Review

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What do parents teach their children? – The effects

of parental involvement on student performance
in Dutch compulsory education

Sofie J. Cabus & Roel J. Ariës

To cite this article: Sofie J. Cabus & Roel J. Ariës (2017) What do parents teach their children?
– The effects of parental involvement on student performance in Dutch compulsory education,
Educational Review, 69:3, 285-302, DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2016.1208148

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Educational Review, 2017
VOL. 69, NO. 3, 285–302
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2016.1208148

OPEN ACCESS

What do parents teach their children? – The effects of parental

involvement on student performance in Dutch compulsory
education
Sofie J. Cabus and Roel J. Ariës
Top Institute for Evidence Based Education Research (TIER), Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, Maastricht
University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Theory and evidence indicate that, if family size grows, the younger Received 18 May 2016
children will get less parental involvement than the older children. Accepted 28 June 2016
These differences in parental involvement through birth order may KEYWORDS
impact academic achievement if, and only if, parental involvement Birth order; communication;
is an important determinant of children’s educational attainment. homework involvement;
The oldest child then benefits the most in terms of educational parents; student
outcomes. Estimates for the Netherlands show a robust negative achievement
relationship between birth order and parental involvement, and
significant positive medium to large effects of parental involvement
through birth order on various measures of academic achievement.
Furthermore, our findings indicate that academic achievement is
rooted in a school-supportive home climate, and often created by
the mother. However, when it comes to math performance and grade
retention, it is better that both parents unduly interfere with school.
We also find that parents with low socio-economic status and from
immigrant families are as much involved in the education of their
children as the average Dutch family, but their involvement is less
effective in terms of children’s learning outcomes.

1. Introduction
It is widely supported that student achievement increases one’s chances on school career
and labor market success (De Witte et al. 2013; Rumberger 2011). There is much less con-
sensus in the literature, however, on how to increase student achievement in the most effec-
tive way (e.g. European Commission 2010; Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development [OECD] 1999, 2009). The literature indicates several determinants of academic
achievement, including: student motivation (Baumert and Demmrich 2001; Linnenbrink
2005); rewards (Deci, Koestner, and Ryan 2001); school engagement (Wang and Holcombe
2010); teachers (Klassen and Tze 2014; Rockoff 2004); self-regulation strategies for cognitive,

CONTACT  Sofie J. Cabus  s.cabus@maastrichtuniversity.nl

 The supplementary material for this paper is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2016.1208148.
© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
286    S. J. Cabus and R. J. Ariës

motivational and behavioral aspects (Nota, Soresi, and Zimmerman 2004); socio-economic
status (Alexander, Entwisle, and Olson 2007; Dumont et al. 2012); classroom composition
(Koth, Bradshaw, and Leaf 2008; Reyes et al. 2012); peer effects (Rothstein 2006); competition
between schools (Macleod and Urquiola, 2009); unauthorized truancy (Henry 2007); crime
and citizenship (Lochner and Moretti 2004a, 2004b); reasoning abilities (Ariës, Groot, and
Maassen van den Brink, 2015); and health and mortality (Albouy and Lequien 2009; Groot
and Maassen van den Brink 2007). This article puts particular focus on one determinant of
academic attainment that has increasingly attracted attention from many scientists and
policy-makers across OECD countries, namely: parental involvement in the education of
their children (e.g. European Commission 2010; US Department of Education 2010). As paren-
tal involvement involves many complex dimensions, previous literature indicate large dif-
ferences in effects on children’s academic achievement (Ariës and Cabus 2015; Driessen,
Smit, and Sleegers 2005). Wilder (2014, 390) summarizes:
The most prominent parental involvement components in the analyzed meta-analyses were
communication between parents and children regarding school, checking and helping with
homework, parental educational expectations and aspirations for their children, and attendance
and participation in school activities.
If one could estimate the benefits of parental involvement in terms of higher academic
achievement, not only a definition problem may arise (see Section 3), but also some empirical
issues. Parental involvement is clearly (reversely) related to student achievement through
its determinants. For example, children with learning difficulties may benefit from increased
parental involvement in their homework. As a result, student performance determines the
level of homework involvement, so that one may falsely conclude that parental involvement
leads to lower student performance. Reversed causality or endogeneity are serious issues
of concern when interpreting the relationship between parental involvement and achieve-
ment (Angrist and Pischke 2009). In fact, several reviews of the literature argue that causal
empirical evidence on the positive relationship between parental involvement and student
success is ultimately scarce (e.g. Ariës and Cabus 2015; Avvisati, Besbas, and Guyon 2011;
Avvisati et al. 2014; Fan and Chen 2001; Hotz and Pantano 2015; Patall, Cooper, and Robinson
2008; Price 2008, 2010). The main contribution of this article to the previous literature is then
an evaluation of the effects of parental involvement on student academic achievement,
rather than estimating the association between both. Doing so, it is proposed in this article
to use birth order of the child as an instrumental variable (IV). Fairly recent evidence (Damian
and Roberts 2015; Price 2010) increasingly supports the idea that birth order is an appropriate
instrument for parental involvement. The identification strategy benefits from unique and
rich data of about 9000 12-year old students and their parents in one country (the
Netherlands). The data allow us to define parental involvement in the two distinct ways that
deal with the school-supportive home climate (i.e. homework and parent–child communi-
cation on education), and include information on birth order of the child (see Section 3).
Information on student and parent characteristics are also provided, such as education of
the parents and income, native tongue and cultural differences of the parents, and which
one of the parents mostly decides on school matters. For the outcome variable “student
performance”, we have detailed information on test scores from the national exam (CITO).
CITO test scores measure children’s proficiency at the end of primary education (on average
12 year olds) in a standardized way with respect to math, language and information pro-
cessing. These exams are considered highly reliable and valid and, above all, owing to its
 Educational Review   287

standardized measurement, are comparable across students and schools (Zijsling et al. 2005).
Additionally, we also use grade retention over the primary education school career as an
outcome variable. We consider grade retention as closely related to the set of study results
over primary education, and as a proxy for being at-risk of school failure (e.g. school dropout)
(Snow 2006).
This article proceeds as follows. Theory and evidence on the relationship between birth
order and parental involvement are discussed in Section 2. Section 3 presents the data and
descriptive statistics, and Section 4 the results. Section 5 deals with the robustness analyses.
Section 6 concludes.

2.  Preferential treatment of first-borns

2.1. Theory
Early literature discussed several mechanisms that may lead to the “preferential” treatment
of first-borns compared with higher ranked children. These mechanisms are not only eco-
nomically, but also biologically based. As the main economic reason, Behrman and Taubman
(1986) point to the household budget constraint. While parents tend to evenly engage them-
selves in the education of all of their children, they have to increasingly trade off their time
investments in the children with household expenses in response to growing family size. If
the family size increases, parents may have to adjust downwards their level of expenditures
per child, while expenditures on the first-born child are already foregone. It is in this respect
that Becker and co-authors earlier discussed the tradeoff between quantity and quality of
children. Their model is often referred to as the QQ-model in the literature (Becker and Lewis
1973; Becker and Tomes 1976). Quality is defined as partly endowed and partly under (par-
ents’) control. They argue that: “It is sufficient to recognize that an increase in the quantity
of children raises the cost or shadow price of the quality of children, and vice versa” (Becker
and Tomes 1976, S143). Behrman and Taubman (1986) as follows discuss several biological
reasons – on which evidence is scarce. They argue that higher order children may have lower
genetic endowments (i.e. innate ability), because the older the mother, the likelier birth
deficits happen. Or small family households may dislike parenting because of a difficult
first-born or second-born child, and consequently, decide against having another child.
Hanushek (1992) adds that first-born children spend their first years in life as an only child
in the family. Consequently, the child is more adult oriented and will imitate the parents
more.
A theoretical framework on preferential treatment of first-borns is also offered by Blundell,
Chiappori, and Meghir (2005). Within their framework, the authors add the decision power
of the wife (relative to her partner) to the household budget constraint. This decision power
may well denote the “bargaining power”, i.e. the relative ability of the woman to exert influ-
ence in collective household decisions on investments, such as investments in the child. It
is shown that, if the woman (man) gains in decision power relative to the man (woman) in
the household, then this increases (decreases) investments in the child. Investments in the
child can be partly captured as expenditures on goods, such as nutrition and clothing for
the child, but also partly in the time spent with the child, briefly denoted by parental
involvement.
288    S. J. Cabus and R. J. Ariës

2.2. Proposition
From Becker and Tomes (1976); Behrman and Taubman (1986); and Blundell, Chiappori, and
Meghir (2005), a testable proposition can be derived, namely: if the family size increases,
then this requests not only more expenditures, but also more parental involvement, while,
ceteris paribus parents’ labor supply, the budget constraint remains the same. As such, rela-
tively to expenditures, it becomes more expensive to invest in (additional) time spent with
the child. Therefore, if family size increases, the child with the highest rank will get less
parental involvement in education than the child with the lowest rank. These differences in
parental involvement by birth order may impact academic achievement if, and only if, paren-
tal involvement in education is an important determinant of educational attainment. If so,
then the oldest child benefits the most in terms of better educational outcomes than the
younger child(ren).

2.3.  Findings from the previous literature

Previous literature mainly focused on empirical estimates of the QQ-model (Cáceres-Delpiano
2006; Li, Zhang, and Zhu 2008). Angrist and co-authors (Angrist and Evans 1998; Angrist,
Lavy, and Schlosser 2010) analyze the effect of increasing quantity of children on labor supply
of both women and men. They take advantage of the sibling gender mix in households with
at least two children in order to estimate an instrumental variables strategy. Hereby, Angrist
and Evans (1998) exploit parental preferences for sibling gender composition; and later also
combine new sources of exogenous variation in family size in order to explore robustness
of using twins as an instrument (e.g. Black, Devereux, and Salvanes 2005). Angrist, Lavy, and
Schlosser (2010) confirm the “stereotype” that childbearing impacts labor supply of especially
lower educated women, but not of men. They additionally check for robustness of their
results by using households with second-birth twins. By comparing households with three
children with households with second-birth twins, the authors make advantage of the fact
that a third-born child is always younger than the third-born twin. Angrist and Evans (1998)
conclude that it takes up till the child’s age of 13 before the labor market consequences of
bearing a third child disappears.
Cáceres-Delpiano (2006) and Lee (2008) also used multiple births as an instrument for
family size in order to explore its impact of child quantity and child wellbeing. Cáceres-
Delpiano (2006) finds results in line with the QQ-model of Becker and Lewis (1973) and
Becker and Tomes (1976): twin births reduce preferential treatment of higher order children
and also negatively impact the school career (e.g. decreased likelihood to attend private
schools). Like in Angrist and Evans (1998), Cáceres-Delpiano (2006) identifies effects on moth-
er’s labor supply. The author also adds evidence to the literature that parents have an
increased likelihood to divorce owing to bearing twins. Lee (2008) uses preferences for sons
in the particular context of South Korea as an instrument for family size. The author argues
that, as long as parents do not abort girls, the gender of the first-born child is a good predictor
of having more than one child.
Price (2008, 2010) presents new valuable insights on preferential treatment of first-borns
by explicitly focusing on the parents’ time spent with their children. The author argues that
first-borns receive a preferential treatment of about 20 to 30 minutes of quality time more
each day than their higher order siblings. Hereby, he accounts for differences between
 Educational Review   289

families and children’s ages. The author shows that the estimated effect is mainly driven by
the age of the first-born child: parents spent equal time with each child at any given point
in time, but increasingly less time when children grow older. The second-born child will
receive less quality time when he/she reaches the same age as the older sibling.

3. Data
3.1.  Student and parent characteristics
The empirical application deals with one country, namely: the Netherlands. We use data
(Voortgezet Onderwijs Cohort Leerlingen, VOCL’99) from a representative cohort of 9126
students who enrolled in Grade 7 of secondary education in 1999–2000. Notwithstanding
that we present results from a cohort of students enrolled in Dutch secondary education in
1999–2000, we argue from previous literature that the results are still relevant and valid for
the current situation. In the systematic literature review of Ariës and Cabus (2015) it is argued
that the way parents engage in children’s homework or learning for tests is correlated with
student performance. However, these parental strategies for teaching their children are hard
to influence or change. Moreover, the authors also indicate that the pre- and post-2001
estimates in the previous literature on the relationship between parental involvement and
children’s learning outcomes did not significantly change. In addition, Wilder (2014, 393)
also argues that it did not matter how parental involvement in the education of their children
was defined, “The results of the meta-synthesis indicated that this relationship was positive
regardless of how parental involvement was defined.” There is no reason to believe that the
effect of parental involvement on children’s learning outcomes drastically changed over
time.
At Grade 7, most students are 12 year-olds. These students constitute 721 classrooms
that are part of 122 different schools. The data contain a rich set of student and parent
characteristics, are partly composed of administrative data (i.e. the exam results on CITO),
and partly of questionnaires (i.e. the questions on parental involvement). The descriptive
statistics of these data are provided in the Supplemental Material, available online.
The outcome variables of interest in this article are: (1) the test results on the standardized
CITO exams of math, language, and information processing; and (2) a history of grade reten-
tion over the school career in primary education. CITO are national exams performed at the
end of primary education. The test results of the CITO exam are used to give advice to the
student and his parents on school type and secondary education track (pre-university level,
general secondary level, and pre-vocational secondary level). About 80% of students follow
the advice from the school based on CITO. The test is considered highly reliable and valid
and, above all, owing to its standardized measurement, is comparable across students and
schools (Zijsling et al. 2005).
The average test scores on CITO of the full sample are 13.04 (math), 13.07 (language), and
12.53 (information processing). And 12.29% of students have a history of grade retention in
primary education. Note that we standardize these outcomes variables in Section 4, so that
the estimation output can be interpreted as standardized coefficients.
About one in every two students is male, and 87.45% are Dutch (i.e. born in the
Netherlands). Their parents are also most likely born in the Netherlands, married (87.42%)
and Catholic (32.51%) or atheist (32.52%). About 82% of parents have at least a certificate
290    S. J. Cabus and R. J. Ariës

of secondary education; 45% of parents have an annual household income higher than
27,200 euros.
Students are part of a family with two to three children. One in every two students of our
sample is first in line, 31.59% second in line, 12.69% third in line, and 6.33% fourth (or further)
in line. Important to note is that in our data each group of children having the same birth
order comes from different families. As such, observed differences in birth order are observed
across, not within, families. As a result of using cross-section between-family data, each rank
represents a “healthy” mix of student and family characteristics, including a lot of variation
in age of the mother and socio-economic status of the family. For example, it is perfectly
possible that a child with birth order 2 was born when his/her mother was 27, while another
child with birth order 2 was born when his/her mother was 22. Accordingly, we observe a
small and insignificant (p-value = 0.3170) correlation of 0.0105 between birth order and
socio-economic status. The correlation between family size and socio-economic status is
equal to 0.0528 and significant at 1% level.

3.2.  Measures of parental involvement

The literature offers multiple definitions of parental involvement (see, for example, Driessen,
Smit, and Sleegers 2005; Epstein 1995; Epstein and Sheldon 2002; McNeal 2001; Phtiaka
1996). In order to make parental involvement measureable, we are in need of a clear and
unambiguous definition of what constitutes parental involvement. In this article we define
two different types of parental involvement, namely: (1) involvement in homework; and (2)
parent–child communication on school matters. The former type of involvement is consid-
ered an active form, as parents invest (additional) time in doing homework with their children
(Phtiaka 1996). It also addresses McNeal’s (2001) concept of cultural capital. And in line with
Epstein (1995) and Epstein and Sheldon (2002), parental involvement in homework deals
with creating a supportive learning environment at home. Contrary, the latter type of involve-
ment, parent–child communication, is rather passive, as parents can talk with the child on
school matters, for example, over dinner. It does not necessarily request time investment,
but instead reflects the school-supportive home climate (McNeal 2001).
Both measures of parental involvement are included in the VOCL questionnaires. Factor
analysis was used in order to construct scales from the underlying questions. The scale
parental involvement in homework is a composite measure of questions (to parents) dealing
with helping, hearing, controlling, and encouraging homework. The scale reliability coeffi-
cient Cronbach’s alpha of the unstandardized items is equal to 0.7479. The scale parent–child
communication is a composite measure of questions (to parents) dealing with asking (talking
with) the child about results on exams, school matters, or what the child has learned at
school. The scale reliability coefficient Cronbach’s alpha of the unstandardized items is equal
to 0.7045.

4.  Estimates on parental involvement

4.1.  Ordinary least squares (OLS)-estimates
We wish to estimate the effect of parental involvement on student achievement. The esti-
mates with respect to the CITO test scores are significantly negative, and with respect to
 Educational Review   291

grade retention significantly positive. The effect sizes are small. These findings are coun-
ter-intuitive, as they indicate that parental involvement is negatively associated with student
achievement, and positively associated with grade retention. Therefore, we argue that the
relationship rather runs from academic achievement to parental involvement (i.e. reversed
causality). It is in this respect that the literature indicates that students with rather low aca-
demic achievement also increasingly receive help and attention at home (Fan and Chen
2001; Hotz and Pantano 2015; Silinskas et al. 2013).

4.2. IV-estimates
4.2.1.  Discussion of the assumptions
This article explores how we can deal with the aforementioned issues of endogeneity and
reversed causality by using birth order as an instrument for parental involvement. There are
a couple of assumptions underlying the use of instrumental variables in order to claim the
estimates to be causal (Angrist, Imbens, and Rubin 1996). From the literature and the iden-
tification tests later, we argue that these assumptions can be met. First, consider the exclusion
restriction. Birth order is randomly assigned, and, additionally, the child cannot affect its
rank in the family. Birth order is, as such, exogenous to the child. In addition, fairly recent
evidence from the previous literature (Damian and Roberts 2015; Price 2008, 2010), increas-
ingly supports the idea that birth order is an appropriate instrument for parental involve-
ment. Recent findings from a representative sample of 377,000 US high school students
indicate that personality or intelligence scores are not (or only negligible) affected by birth
order (Damian and Roberts 2015). The authors chose for a between-family design and a set
of similar control variables as in our present study (age, gender, family size, indicators for
socio-economic status and family structure) in order to control for potential confounding
factors. Note that in our study, we deal with exactly the same set-up as Damian and Roberts
(2015) – i.e. we only have (the birth order of) one child per family, also called a between-family
design. As such, observed differences in parental involvement with increasing birth order
are measured between (not within) families. Damian and Roberts (2015) argue that birth
order is not an important determinant of personality and intelligence, and, as such, this
research supports the hypothesis that the main effects of birth order on student performance
come from variations in parental involvement.
Second, according to the theoretical and empirical studies with respect to family size and
parental involvement (or other household outcomes), birth order should have a negative
relationship with parental involvement, so that also the IV-assumption of monotonicity is
met (Section 2). Theory indicates several mechanisms that drive this negative relationship,
including: preferential treatment of first-borns (Behrman and Taubman 1986; Price 2008);
the quantity–quality tradeoff (Becker and Tomes 1976); or parents’ labor supply and bar-
gaining power of the wife (Blundell, Chiappori, and Meghir 2005). Although family size and
birth order are closely related to each other, they are still conceptually distinct. Family size
is a constant for every child of the household and captures unobserved information at the
household level. On the other hand, birth order is an individual (child) level instrument that
differs between siblings and, controlling for family size in a multivariate regression, it is
unrelated to parents’ background or fertility decisions (Belmont and Marolla 1973; Black,
Devereux, and Salvanes 2011). As such, we wish to estimate the effect of birth order on
academic attainment through its (negative) association with parental involvement and
292    S. J. Cabus and R. J. Ariës

conditional on (at least) family size. By making the estimates conditional on family size, we
can avoid that birth order captures unobserved household level information.

4.2.2.  First-stage estimates

Consider the first-stage regression of the most simple model specification that does not
consider household income, decision power, or student–parent characteristics:
∑
𝜌 = cte1 + Rk � 𝛿k + FS� 𝛽1 + e1 (1)

where 𝜌 denotes parental involvement and Rk, the rank of the child, the instrument. Note
that we include dummy variables for each rank Rk instead of a continuous variable R, as we
do not wish to make assumptions on the linearity of the relationship between rank of child
and parental involvement (for a discussion on linearity, see also Angrist and Evans 1998;
Black, Devereux, and Salvanes 2011; Hanushek 1992). The basic first-stage model specifica-
tion controls for family size in order to control for the relationship between rank of the child
and family size.
Table 1 presents the results of the first-stage regression as specified in Equation (1). Note
that each model clusters the standard error at the level of the classroom (Murnane and Willett
2010). The results indicate a clear negative relationship between birth order and parental
involvement. The size of the effect increases with birth order. One can easily control for
student and parent characteristics (including household income) by adding covariates to
Equation (1). These estimates are also presented in the second column of Table 1. The results
indicate that the estimates of birth order are robust to including control variables. Several
identification tests have been performed (the under-identification test, the weak identifica-
tion test, and the over-identification test). These or additional statistics on the validity of IV

Table 1. Results of the first stage regression (parental involvement in homework = standardized scale).
   Without control variables With control variables
Instrumental variable (IV)
First in line = reference
Second in line −0.1362*** −0.1330***
(0.0251) (0.0245)
Third in line −0.1773*** −0.1667***
(0.0363) (0.0354)
Fourth in line −0.2188*** −0.1992***
(0.0534) (0.0516)

Family size −0.0425*** −0.0313***

(0.0132) (0.0133)
IV and matching
First in line = reference
Second in line −0.1431*** −0.1369***
(0.0249) (0.0243)
Third in line −0.1783*** −0.1665***
(0.0365) (0.0355)
Fourth in line −0.2074*** −0.2083***
(0.0537) (0.0523)
Family size −0.0408 −0.0321
(0.0131) (0.0133)
Number of clusters 721 721
Number of observations 9126 9126
Note: Robust standard errors between brackets.
 Educational Review   293

Table 2. Summary of the estimation output (parental involvement in homework = standardized scale).

Math Language Information processing Grade retention
OLS −0.1367*** −0.1743*** −0.1879*** −0.1704*** −0.1583*** −0.1710*** 0.0609*** 0.0519***
(0.0118) (0.0106) (0.0116) (0.0109) (0.0114) (0.0108) (0.0112) (0.0103)
IV 0.6690*** 0.6490*** 0.9494*** 1.0209*** 1.3206*** 1.3710*** −0.3212** −0.3507**
(0.2020) (0.2003) (0.2389) (0.2454) (0.2798) (0.2905) (0.1463) (0.1392)
IV and 0.6647*** 0.6833*** 0.9955*** 1.0838*** 1.3410*** 1.4068*** −0.3008** −0.3067**
matching
(0.2010) (0.1999) (0.2458) (0.2507) (0.2824) (0.2904) (0.1390) (0.1355)
Control Noa Yesb Noa Yesb Noa Yesb Noaa Yesb
Variables
Number of 721 721 721 721 721 721 721 721
clusters
Number of 9126 9126 9126 9126 9126 9126 9103 9103
observations
a
No control variables except family size.
b
These control variables include: family size, gender, age, ethnicity, marital status, religion, language, culture, education,
and income.
c
Robust standard errors clustered at the level of the class between brackets.

are available from the authors on request. In summary, the statistics show that: (1) the equa-
tion is well-identified; (2) the instrument has significant explanatory power; and (3) the
instrument is uncorrelated with the error term. However, these latter results should be inter-
preted with caution, as using a flexible birth order specification still does not provide us with
multiple instruments (necessary for the over-identification test).

4.2.3.  Second-stage estimates

In the second-stage regression, we estimate the effect of parental involvement on stand-
ardized test scores that only comes through the effect of instrument, birth order. We then
may write:
Y = cte2 + 𝜌̂� 𝜃 + FS� 𝛽2 + e2 (2)
where the estimate of interest is θ. The results from the second-stage regressions as specified
in Equation (2) are presented in Table 2. Using the birth order of the child as an instrumental
variable, the second stage results show a clear positive effect of parental involvement on
academic achievement. The effect sizes of math (0.6690), language (0.9494), and information
processing (1.3206) are medium to large, whereas the effect size of grade retention (−0.3212)
is small.

4.2.4.  IV-estimates with matching of parents

In a third and final model specification, we additionally suggest matching of the parents
who are not or only to a limited extent involved in the child’s homework to parents who
frequently are. Propensity score matching is most suitable in this respect, as it would only
compare parents whose household situation is (almost) identical based on the observed
parent characteristics (Rubin 1974, 2006). Hereby, we can check whether households with
low versus high levels of involvement in school matters are different based on their back-
ground characteristics. In order to match parents, we first create a dummy variable from the
frequency variable with respect to parental involvement in homework. Parents who indicate
“no help” (45%) on this variable receive the value of 0, and 1 if otherwise.
294    S. J. Cabus and R. J. Ariës

The Probit results on which matching of the parents are based (cf. propensity score match-
ing; Rubin 2006) are available from the authors upon request. Figure 1 plots the overlap in
the covariate distributions between low versus high levels of parental involvement in home-
work. We observe a strong overlap in parent characteristics, indicating that high and low
levels of parental involvement in homework can be observed in households with very dif-
ferent socio-economic states. Results of the “IV and matching” model specification are pre-
sented in Table 1. We conclude that the IV approach with matching yield comparable
estimates to the IV approach without matching. These findings confirm that our IV-results
are robust to matching of parents, making matching of parents unnecessary in further robust-
ness checks.

5.  Robustness analysis

The estimates from the robustness analysis are summarized in Table 3. Each model controls
for student–parent characteristics. Results from first-stage regressions are not presented in
tables in this article, but they are available from the authors.

5.1.  Parent–child communication

First, consider the results of using another definition/measure of parental involvement,
namely: the parent–child communication on school matters at home. This measure could
be especially interesting, because it takes parents less effort to ask children about their stories
of the day than helping them with homework, but, nonetheless, also creates a school-
supportive home climate. We summarize the first-stage estimates of birth order as follows
(first in line as the reference category): −0.12 significant at 1% level (second in line); −0.08
significant at 1% level (third in line); and −0.23 significant at 1% level (fourth in line). Overall,
the magnitude of these first-stage estimates are somewhat smaller than those presented in
Table 1, but it does not alter the relationship between birth order and parental involvement.
5
4
Kernel density
3
2
1
0

.3 .4 .5 .6 .7

propensity scores

Parents not helping in homework Parents helping in homework

Figure 1. Distribution of the propensity scores of parents helping and not helping in homework.
 Educational Review   295

Table 3. Summary of the estimation output (parental involvement = standardized scale).

Model 1  Model 2 Model 3  Model 4 Model 5
Full model Family size > 1 Both parents Only mother Only father
1. Math
  Parent–child 0.6490*** 0.6379*** 0.7572*** 0.5870** −0.2763
  homework (0.2003) (0.1936) (0.2857) (0.2826) (0.5950)
  Parent–child 0.7358*** 0.6859*** 0.5397** 0.7832** −0.2994
  Communication (0.2178) (0.2075) (0.2352) (0.3531) (1.9393)
2. Language
  Parent–child 1.0209*** 1.0298*** 1.0691*** 0.9987*** −0.3070
  homework (0.2454) (0.2409) (0.3386) (0.3473) (0.5519)
  Parent–child 0.8543*** 0.9637*** 0.5621** 1.0031** −0.2312
  Communication (0.2288) (0.2353) (0.2270) (0.3873) (1.8355)
3. Information processing
  Parent–child 1.3710*** 1.3640*** 1.3375*** 1.3147*** −0.2398
  homework (0.2905) (0.2808) (0.3912) (0.4106) (0.5550)
  Parent–child 1.1948*** 1.2676*** 0.8404*** 1.3216*** 0.3422
  Communication (0.2797) (0.2822) (0.2795) (0.4632) (2.1077)
4. Grade retention
  Parent–child −0.3507** −0.3250** −0.4019** −0.3097 −0.3854
  homework (0.1392) 0.1347 (0.1892) (0.2215) (0.6619)
  Parent–child −0.3315** −0.2998** −0.3168* −0.3684 −0.5320
  Communication (0.1539) (0.1505) (0.1766) (0.2551) (2.2854)
Number of clusters 721 721 718 715 285
Number of observations 9126 7741 4426 3844 378
Notes: Specification IV without matching and standard errors clustered at the level of the class. Each model also controls for
all student and parent characteristics. These control variables include: family size, gender, age, ethnicity, marital status,
religion, language, culture, education, and income.

It is also worth noting that the conclusions from the identification tests remain unchanged.1
These statistics are available from the authors upon request. The second-stage estimates of
Table 3 indicate that parent–child communication is effective in boosting academic
performance. The results of the full model specification indicate medium to large effect sizes
with respect to math (0.7358), language (0.8543), and information processing (1.1948). With
respect to grade retention, the effects size (−0.3315) is small and significant at 5% level. In
general, the estimates with respect to parent–child communication are relatively lower than
those with respect to homework involvement.

5.2.  At least two children in the family

Angrist and Evans (1998) argue for a model specification that includes households with at
least two children. As such, we exclude households with only one child from the data and
then re-estimate Equations (1) and (2). The results of the second-stage regression are highly
comparable in magnitude compared to the full model specification in the first column of
Table 3. As such, we conclude that our estimates are robust to this model specification.
Furthermore, we also have checked whether our findings change when one would report
the results separately for families with two, three, or four children. For example, we ran a
regression estimating the effects of parental involvement in homework on math performance
keeping only observations for families with two children. The second-stage results from such
regression is equal to 0.5472 significant at 5% level (N = 3552). We repeated this approach
for families with three children (second-stage result equal to 0.6596 significant at 5% level;
296    S. J. Cabus and R. J. Ariës

N = 2642) and for families with four or more children (second-stage result equal to 0.9068
not significant; N = 932).

5.3.  Decision power of the wife

We observe that most often only the wife (42.51%) makes the educational choices, or both
parents (49.08%) (variable “decision power”). A small share of fathers (4.18%) indicates that
they have the decision power on these school matters, and not the wife. However, mostly
mothers (69.6%) filled in the VOCL questionnaires for parents, whereas only a small share of
fathers (23.9%), and a very small share of caregivers (0.4%) did so. Therefore, this self-reported
variable should be interpreted with caution. Following Blundell, Chiappori, and Meghir
(2005), we estimate three models (Models 3–5) that consider the decision power of the wife
(relative to her partner) on the education of their child. We then may estimate Equation (2)
separately by mother, father, and both parents, as to only compare families wherein only
the mother (Model 3), only the father (Model 5), or both parents (Model 4) make the decisions
on their child’s education. Table 3 presents the results of the second-stage regression. Our
findings indicate a special role of the mother in the family, as, overall, her involvement in
communication with the child on school matters clearly significantly boosts the academic
performance of the child, especially on language and information processing. These findings
are in line with Björklund, Lindahl, and Lindquist (2010). However, when it comes to math
performance and grade retention, it is better that both parents unduly interfere with school.

5.4.  Differential effectiveness

Table 4 presents the second-stage results by immigrant status, gender and socio-economic
status. The results from Table 4 show that largest effects can be found for Dutch female

Table 4. Second-stage results by immigrant status, gender and socio-economic status (SES).
  Model A Model B Model C Model D Model E Model F Model G
Only
Full model Only Dutch immigrants Only Boys Only girls Low SES High SES
IV: Second stage
Math 0.6490*** 0.6683*** 0.0222 0.4191** 0.6481** 0.5795 0.6575***
−0.2003 0.1892 0.3994 0.1869 0.3295 1.1603 0.1919

Language 1.0209*** 0.9304*** −0.1747 0.7464*** 1.1947*** 0.2795 1.0315***

−0.2454 0.2183 0.4028 0.2335 0.4315 1.0474 0.2282

Information 1.3710*** 1.2802*** −0.7527 1.1069*** 1.2945*** 0.2795 1.0315***

processing −0.2905 0.2617 0.5274 0.2831 0.4459 1.0474 0.2282

Grade −0.3507** −0.4090*** 0.3857 −0.4426*** −0.0839 −0.8972 −0.3126***

retention −0.1392 0.1345 0.4377 0.1623 0.2080 1.1658 0.1294
Number of clusters 721  717  495  717  707  618 719 
Number of 9126  7981  1145  4588  4538  1652  7451 
observations
Notes: Specification IV without matching and standard errors clustered at the level of the class. Each model also controls for
all student and parent characteristics. These control variables include: family size, gender, age, ethnicity, marital status,
religion, language, culture, education, and income. High socio-economic status was mainly based on parents’ education
(at least upper secondary education or higher). As such, parents with no diploma (ISCED 0–2) are considered having low
socio-economic status.
 Educational Review   297

Table 5. Reduced form regression, indirect least squares (ratio), and IV-estimates.
3. Information
    1. Math  2. Language processing 4. Grade retention
Reduced form (RF) −0.0852*** −0.0878*** −0.1313*** 0.0143***
(0.0153) (0.0149) (0.0152) (0.0047)
First stage (FS) −0.0885*** −0.0885*** −0.0885*** −0.0885***
(0.0148) (0.0148) (0.0148) (0.0148)

Ratio: RF/FS 0.9632 0.9929 1.4836 −0.1618

IV-estimates 0.9632*** 0.9929*** 1.4837*** −0.1618

(0.2533) (0.2624) (0.3210) (0.0604)

Number of clusters 721 721 721 721

Number of 9126 9126 9126 9103
observations
Note: Output using a linear specification for birth order. Robust standard errors clustered at the level of the class between
brackets. Each model controls for family size.

students with relatively high socio-economic status. Contrary, we cannot present significant
results for immigrant and low socio-economic status students. In combination with previous
estimates, we conclude that low socio-economic status and immigrant families are as much
involved in the education of their children as the average Dutch family (see Table 3, specifi-
cation “IV and matching”), but their involvement is less effective in terms of children’s learning
outcomes. Hence, the insignificant results for these two subgroups. These findings can be
explained by the differential effectiveness of parents teaching or helping strategies (Ariës
and Cabus 2015), but also because of parental competence to help with homework (Dumont
et al. 2012).

5.5.  Reduced form (RF) regression and indirect least squares (ILS)
The estimates of reduced form (RF) regression and indirect least squares (ILS) are presented
in Table 5. If birth order only works through parental involvement, then, first, we should
observe that student performance decreases with increasing birth order. The RF coefficients
for Math test scores indicate a small and significant negative direct effect of birth order on
math test scores (effect size = −0.0852). This negative sign and the magnitude of the effect
remain unchanged when considering performance on language and information processing.
Logically, we observe the opposite positive sign for grade retention. If birth order only works
through parental involvement, then, second we should observe that ILS yields similar results
as in the case of second-stage IV. The results indicate that ILS coefficients and second-stage
IV coefficients are exactly the same.

6. Conclusion
This article discusses the effects of parental involvement on academic achievement. Birth
order has been used as an instrument for parental involvement in order to account for
endogeneity issues. The previous literature argues a robust negative effect of birth order of
the child on parental involvement (e.g. Angrist and Evans 1998; Becker and Tomes 1976;
Price 2008). Our first-stage findings are in line with the results of previous studies, namely:
298    S. J. Cabus and R. J. Ariës

first-borns benefit from preferential treatment. We confirm that older children, on average,
receive more parental involvement than the youngest of the family. The estimated effect
sizes are relatively small, but do steadily increase with growing family size. Moreover, the
first-stage estimates are highly robust to several model specifications, including matching
of the parents, using two different definitions of parental involvement, and adding control
variables. The validity of the instrument is also discussed in this article, and meets the
conventions.
For the second stage, we estimate positive effects of parental involvement in homework
on academic achievement with medium to large effect sizes for math (0.66), language (0.99),
and information processing (1.34), and small effect sizes −0.32 for grade retention.
Furthermore, we observe that academic performance is rooted in a school-supportive home
climate that is often created by the mother. Parental homework involvement positively influ-
ences language skills the most. Using another definition of parental involvement, namely
parent–child communication on school matters, does not change our conclusions. The sec-
ond-stage estimates are robust to various model specifications and control variables.
Our study has limitations. Mammen (2011) argues that not only child quantity matters,
but also the sibling gender composition. The author finds that fathers tend to invest more
time in the children when there is a son in the family compared to all-girls families. McGuire
and Shanahan (2010) also refer to the differential effects of siblings, birth order, and the
parent–child relationship (compared to siblings) on child outcomes across context and family
types. However, the data did not include information on gender of the siblings, so that we
could not account for this. Second, we could not control for age of the parents at birth, too.
Older age of the parents at birth may be associated with lower child endowments (Behrman
and Taubman 1986; Price 2008). However, evidence from Statistics Netherlands (cbs.nl, 2015)
indicates several general trends in parents’ child wish. The average age of the mother giving
birth to her first child increases with her own fathers’ level of education and parents’ family
composition. If fathers’ level of education is rather high, then women will postpone their
child wish. And women coming from families with multiple siblings are more likely to become
mothers at an earlier age. Additionally, women who grew up in single parent families will
start earlier motherhood, while choosing for smaller families. These general trends imply
that parents with high socio-economic status choose for smaller families with the mother
being relatively old, and parents with low socio-economic status choose for bigger families
with the mother being relative young. Based on these general trends, one can expect a lot
of variation in mothers’ age at first-born and later born children within and across families,
depending on socio-economic status and family history. The potential association between
birth order and socio-economic status then rather comes from decisions on family size.
Especially for these reasons, we controlled for family size and indicators of socio-economic
status in the multivariate regression.
To conclude, some implications for policy are discussed. The policy debate could further
discuss the extent to which schools have a role in encouraging parental involvement in
education. School policy could establish better didactic partnerships with the parents by
taking the position of the child in the household into parent–teacher discussions. National
policy could focus more on the fathers of the household, as they are, compared to the
mothers, less actively making decisions about their children’s education. Following Kluve
and Tamm (2013), parental leave regulations can play an important role.
 Educational Review   299

Note
1. 
These statistics with regard the basic model specification include: the under-identification test
(Chi-square = 37.150; p-values = 0.0000); the weak identification test (F =13.960 > 10.000); and
the over-identification test using birth order as dummy variables (Hansen J statistics = 5.063;
p-values = 0.0795).

Acknowledgements
This paper benefitted from comments and discussions with Wim Groot, Henriette Maassen van den
Brink, Joris Ghysels, TIER seminar participants, and participants of the 5th international workshop
on Applied Economics of Education (IWAEE 2014). We also express our gratitude to the referees of
Educational Review. The usual caveat applies.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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