Essays on the economics of parenting and children's socio-emotional skills

This dissertation studies how structural conditions shape adolescents’ socio-emotional development through family behavior in Latin America, with a focus on Peru. It shows that parenting practices, expectations, and daily routines adapt to inequality, institutional quality, and labor market conditions, acting as key transmission channels of macro-level forces. The first chapter documents that weaker institutions and higher inequality are associated with more authoritarian and coercive parenting. The second provides causal evidence that higher maternal expectations of future support negatively affect adolescents’ socio-emotional outcomes, using exogenous variation from female labor market instability. The third evaluates Peru’s extended school-day reform and finds heterogeneous effects: gains for initially disadvantaged students and losses at the top, compressing the distribution of socio-emotional skills. Overall, the findings highlight the central role of families in mediating the effects of structural conditions on human development.