Do Parents Drink Their Children's Welfare? A Joint Analysis of Intra-Household Allocation of Time

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether excessive parental alcohol consumption leads to a reduction of child welfare. To this end, we analyse whether alcohol consumption decreases time spent by parents looking after their children and working. Using the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, the study focuses on mono-nuclear families with children under fifteen years of age, for whom we estimate a model of intra-household allocation of time. We find that husbands' alcohol consumption has a negative impact on their weekly hours spent doing child care, while no significant effect is observed for mothers' alcohol consumption. We interpret these findings as evidence of a negative impact of fathers' alcohol consumption on child welfare.