Citation
Abdullah, Nuraini
(2019)
Moderator effect of household income on parental investment in Malaysia.
Doctoral thesis, Universiti Putra Malaysia.
Abstract
Parents assume the heaviest responsibility ever to prepare children for a brighter
life. It is important for parents to understand the needs of the children so that
they succeed in adulthood. Therefore, the study focuses on predicting the factors
that contribute parental investment. Parental characteristics, child-rearing
practices, parental purchasing behaviour, and financial strain are among the
variables that were tested to explore the predictor of parental investment while
the moderating effect of household income was examined to establish household
income differences pertaining the influences of independent variables on
parental investment. The core theory pertaining to this research is the Theory of
Human Capital. Meanwhile, the Child Quantity-Quality (Q-Q) Trade-Off Theory,
the Parent-Offspring Conflict Theory (POCT), and the ABCD-XYZ Resource
Management Model of Crisis/Stress are supportive theories serving as the basis
for the theoretical framework. This study used secondary data from a research
entitled “Cost of raising a child: Policy implication” where 2,182 samples of
parents with children below six years old from low and middle-income families
were selected. The analysis, which had used Pearson correlation, revealed
positive relationships among variables, namely child-rearing practices (r=.110,
p<.000), parental purchasing behaviour (r=.188, p<.0.000), parental purchasing
behaviour (consumption-related preferences), (r=.194, p<.000), and parental
purchasing behaviour (consumer skills), (r=.079, p<.000), whereas a negative
relationship was reported for financial strain (r=-.111, p<.000) with parental
investment. Binary logistic regression analysis revealed factors predicting
parental investment. Parental characteristics, namely the level of education,
ethnicity, and the number of children per household were significant, while others
variables such as child-rearing practices, parental purchasing behaviour
(consumer related preferences), and financial strain also indicate a significant
contribution to parental investment. Apart from that, PROCESS Macro version
3.3 in SPSS was used to examine the simple moderating effect of household
income based on hypothesis. The moderation effect of household income
revealed that none of parental characteristics such as parents’ level of education, ethnicity, and number of children per household were significant. Other than that,
parental purchasing behaviour (consumer related preferences) and financial
strain were found to be not significant. Only child-rearing practices were found
to have significant moderator effect on parental investment. In summary, this
study supports the importance of parental investment among parents, especially
for those from low and middle-income families. As such, this study underline
some applicable implication to facilitate the parents in terms of children
investment. The recommendations for future research on parental investment
are also pointed out.
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