Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Childhood Development Human Capital Formation and Psycho social Well being written by Kira Marie Villa and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently and emerging literature in economics highlights the importance of early childhood well-being and what are know as "noncognitive" skills to economic success. While growing evidence in links these skills to economic, behavioral and demographic outcomes in the developed countries, there is little such evidence linking these traits to economic outcomes in developing country contexts. Moreover, research in the economics literature generally estimates the effects of a general noncognitive aggregate rather than specific traits. In this dissertation I explore how various dimensions of human capital develop over childhood and how cognition and specific personality and noncognitive traits determine labor market outcomes. Chapter 1 estimates how health, cognition and specific noncognitive abilities are jointly produced over the different stages of childhood in a developing country context. It estimates self- and cross-productivity effects across these different dimensions of child development and examines the role of parental inputs and home environment. The noncognitive abilities examined are risky behaviors, group socialization, positive affect and negative affect. Using a rich panel data set that follows a cohort of Filipino children from birth through adulthood, I estimate this production technology using the dynamic factor model developed in Cuhna and Heckman (2008). Findings show strong path dependency with current levels of child development largely dependent on previous levels causing early disparities in child development to persist throughout childhood into adult- hood. Lagged health, in particular, is an important determinant of current health, cognition and socio-emotional well-being in this developing country context. Cognition and socio-emotional traits similarly exhibit both self- and cross-productivity. Findings imply that child development is cumulative in nature and that early disparities will persist until effective and early remediation is undertaken. Chapter 2 estimates the effect of cognition and five specific personality traits on entrepreneurship and selection into different labor market segments for a sample of young adults in Madagascar. The personality traits examined are know as the Big Five Personality traits: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Examining the effects of specific noncognitive traits will help to better compare results across studies and target policy. I find that both cognition and personality are significant predictors of labor market selection and entrepreneurial activities. Personality matters in determining labor market outcomes of interest and should therefore be considered when discussing and designing human capital targeted policies. If the policy implications of the literature linking personality and outcomes are to be realized, then a better understanding of how these noncognitive traits are developed is needed. However, to date, the literature detailing how the Big Five Personality Traits are formed is much smaller. Chapter 3 explores the environmental and familial determinants of the Big Five Personality Traits. While I cannot directly control for genetics, we use information on maternal extended family to express a degree of genetic predisposition. I find that maternal background, extended family characteristics and other environmental determinants all interact and play a role in determining the five personality traits we examine.

Download or read book Three Essays on Human Capital Child Care and Growth and on Mobility written by Rizwana Alamgir-Arif and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis contributes to the fields of Public Economics and Development Economics by studying human capital formation under three scenarios. Each scenario is represented in an individual paper between Chapters 2 to 4 of this thesis. Chapter 2 examines the effect of child care financing, through human capital formation, on growth and welfare. There is an extensive literature on the benefits of child care affordability on labour market participation. The overall inference that can be drawn is that the availability and affordability of appropriate child care may enhance parental time spent outside the home in furthering their economic opportunities. In another front, the endogenous growth literature exemplifies the merits of subsidizing human capital in generating growth. Again, other contributions demonstrate the negative implications of taxes on the returns from human capital on long run growth and welfare. This paper assesses the long run welfare implications of child care subsidies financed by proportional income taxes when human capital serves as the engine of growth. More specifically, using an overlapping-generations framework (OLG) with endogenous labour choice, we study the implications of a distortionary wage income tax on growth and welfare. When the revenues from proportional income taxes are channelled towards improving economic opportunities for both work and schooling investments in the form of child care subsidies, long run physical and human capital stock may increase. A higher level of growth may ensue leading to higher welfare. Chapter 3 answers the question of how child care subsidization works in the interest of skill formation, and specifically, whether child care subsidization policies can work to the effect of human capital subsidies. Ample studies have highlighted the significance of early childhood learning through child care in determining the child's longer-term outcomes. The general conclusion has been that the quality of life for a child, higher earnings during later life, as well as the contributions the child makes to society as an adult can be traced back to exposures during the first few years of life. Early childhood education obtained through child care has been found to play a pivotal role in the human capital base amongst children that can benefit them in the long run. Based on this premise, the paper develops a simple Overlapping Generations Model (OLG) to find out the implications of early learning on future investments in human capital. It is shown that higher costs of child care will reduce skill investments of parents. Also, for some positive child care cost, higher human capital obtained through early childhood education can induce further skill investments amongst individuals with a higher willingness to substitute consumption intertemporally. Finally, intervention that can internalize the intra-generational human capital externalities arising from parental time spent outside the home - for which care/early learning is required to be purchased for the child - can unambiguously lead to higher skill investments by all individuals. Chapter 3 therefore proposes policy intervention, such as child care subsidization, as the effect of such will be akin to a human capital subsidy. The objective of Chapter 4 is to understand the implications of inter-regional mobility on higher educational investments of individuals and to study in detail the impact of mobility on government spending for education under two particular scenarios --one in which human capital externalities are non-localized and spill over to other regions (e.g. in the form of R & D), and another in which the externalities are localized and remain within the region. It is shown that mobility enhances private investments in education, and all else equal, welfare should be higher with increased migration. The impacts on government educational expenditures are studied and some policy implications are drawn. In general, with non-localized externalities, all public expenditures decline under full-migration. Finally under localized externalities, the paper finds that governments will increase their financing of education to increasingly mobile individuals only when agglomeration benefits outweigh congestion costs from increases in regional population.

Download or read book Three Essays on Human Capital written by Xiaoyan Chen Youderian and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first essay considers how the timing of government education spending influences the intergenerational persistence of income. We build a life-cycle model where human capital is accumulated in early and late childhood. Both families and the government can increase the human capital of young agents by investing in education at each stage of childhood. Ability in each dynasty follows a stochastic process. Different abilities and resultant spending histories generate a stochastic steady state distribution of income. We calibrate our model to match aggregate statistics in terms of education expenditures, income persistence and inequality. We show that increasing government spending in early childhood education is effective in lowering intergenerational earnings elasticity. An increase in government funding of early childhood education equivalent to 0.8 percent of GDP reduces income persistence by 8.4 percent. We find that this relatively large effect is due to the weakening relationship between family income and education investment. Since this link is already weak in late childhood, allocating more public resources to late childhood education does not improve the intergenerational mobility of economic status. Furthermore, focusing more on late childhood may raise intergenerational persistence by amplifying the gap in human capital developed in early childhood. The second essay considers parental time investment in early childhood as an education input and explores the impact of early education policies on labor supply and human capital. I develop a five-period overlapping generations model where human capital formation is a multi-stage process. An agent's human capital is accumulated through early and late childhood. Parents make income and time allocation decisions in response to government expenditures and parental leave policies. The model is calibrated to the U.S. economy so that the generated data matches the Gini index and parental participation in education expenditures. The general equilibrium environment shows that subsidizing private education spending and adopting paid parental leave are both effective at increasing human capital. These two policies give parents incentives to increase physical and time investment, respectively. Labor supply decreases due to the introduction of paid parental leave as intended. In addition, low-wage earners are most responsive to parental leave by working less and spending more time with children. The third essay is on the motherhood wage penalty. There is substantial evidence that women with children bear a wage penalty of 5 to 10 percent due to their motherhood status. This wage gap is usually estimated by comparing the wages of working mothers to childless women after controlling for human capital and individual characteristics. This method runs into the problem of selection bias by excluding non-working women. This paper addresses the issue in two ways. First, I develop a simple model of fertility and labor participation decisions to examine the relationships among fertility, employment, and wages. The model implies that mothers face different reservation wages due to variance in preference over child care, while non-mothers face the same reservation wage. Thus, a mother with a relatively high wage may choose not to work because of her strong preference for time with children. In contrast, a childless woman who is not working must face a relatively low wage. For this reason, empirical analysis that focuses only on employed women may result in a biased estimate of the motherhood wage penalty. Second, to test the predictions of the model, I use 2004-2009 data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) and include non-working women in the two-stage Heckman selection model. The empirical results from OLS and the fixed effects model are consistent with the findings in previous studies. However, the child penalty becomes smaller and insignificant after non-working women are included. It implies that the observed wage gap in the labor market appears to overstate the child wage penalty due to the sample selection bias.

Download or read book Three Essays on Child Development written by Mario Ramos Veloza and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics literature is interested in how child cognitive and socio-emotional skills develop during childhood. Evolution of skills is crucial to determine productivity, criminality among other social and economic outcomes. The government has a role in shaping abilities improving conditions at home or school. Thus, initial deficiencies of children in disadvantageous households can be compensated by increasing resources or material investments. These essays investigate how computers and income affect traditional measures of academic success. Also, how parental conflict is involved in a dynamic framework is investigated. The first chapter analyzes whether access to computers in schools improves performance in math and language standardized tests. Computers and in general technology are part of current living conditions, therefore, there has been a lot of debate whether they contribute to learning. Computers can affect tests because they can substitute or complement teachers and material inputs at school. The analysis is carried out using "Computadores para Educar" a nationwide program in Colombia that allocates computers in public schools. The program started in 2000 as a presidential initiative to improve access and use of information technologies. Results indicate that there is no gain on language and mathematics achievement tests. In the second paper, we focus on the analysis of how cash transfers that affect the budget constraint may have a different effect on child outcomes over the income distribution. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we analyze the impact of support assistance on children from households with low to moderate income in the United States. The data is consistent with two specifications for the relationship between child outcomes and income: a linear and linear in the logarithm. This finding implies that public programs aiming to improve math and reading achievement tests may increase transfers to children from households at the low end of the income distribution. The final chapter includes the effect of parental conflict into skill development during childhood. Parental conflict is a non-tangible input related with psychological well-being of the parents. There is evidence that conflict adversely affects cognitive and non-cognitive skill development, but this is the first study that jointly analyzes the impact on both skills. Estimates suggest that reductions in conflict benefits skills and adult outcomes. Cognitive development is more affected during early childhood and non-cognitive development for later ages. The effect of reducing parental conflict on years of education completed is similar to the effect of increasing parental time but lower than the effect of increasing material investments.

Download or read book Essays in the Economics of Child Health and Skill Formation written by Giacomo Mason and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent research on human capital development during childhood has focused on three im- portant avenues, among others: measurement, modelling, and interventions. In this thesis, in touch on each of these in turn. The chapter titled "The effect of cash and information on child development" examines the child development effects of a "cash plus" intervention in Nigeria, which starts from the pregnancy period. It underlines the interplay between resources and information in achieving growth and cognition improvements. Chapter "Inequality in socioe- motional skills" highlights issues of measurement. It finds that there is no perfect invariance in the measurement of socioemotional skills in two cohorts of British five year olds born 30 years apart, and shows that socioeconomic determinants of such skills have changed over this period. Finally, the chapter titled "The role of diet quality and physical activity in the pro- duction of adolescent human capital" models the human capital production process in early adolescence, exploiting novel sources of exogenous variation to disentangle the health effects of diet and exercise. Significant complementarities between physical and mental health, and between mental health and diet, emerge from the analysis.

Download or read book No Small Matter written by Harold Alderman and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2011 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Education is often seen as a fundamental means to improve economic prospects for individuals from low income settings. However, even with increased emphasis on basic education for all, many individuals fail to achieve basic skills to succeed in life. The book presents evidence that one core reason is that by the time a child is old enough to attend school, there is already a wide disparity in cognitive skills and in emotional and behavioral development among children from households of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Low levels of cognitive development in early childhood strongly correlate with low socio-economic status (as measured by wealth and parental education) as well as malnutrition. These disadvantages are often exacerbated by economic crises. Fortunately, however, as documented in this volume, there are programs that have proven effective in promoting a child's development through caregiver-child interaction and stimulation, and with well designed preschool programs. While preschool programs currently cover a modest share of low income children, expansion of such services to at risk populations is a cost-effective means of improving overall educational achievement. Thus, focused preschool programs can serve as a key investment in a strategy to reduce the transmission of poverty from poor parents to their children."

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Human Capital Development written by Emma Louise Gorman and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Investing in Children written by Ariel Kalil and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investing in Children: Work, Education, and Social Policy in Two Rich Countries presents new research by leading scholars in Australia and the United States on economic factors that influence children's development and the respective social policies that the two nations have designed to boost human capital development. The volume is organized around three major issues: parental employment, early childhood education and child care, and postsecondary education. All three issues are intimately linked with human capital development. Since both Australia and the United States have created extensive policies to address these three issues, there is potential for each to learn from the other's experiences and policies. This volume helps fulfill that potential. The authors demonstrate that in both nations, the effects of low family income and income inequality emerge early in life and persist. However, policies that increase parental employment, augment family income, and promote quality preschool and postsecondary education can boost children's development and at least partially offset the negative developmental effects of family economic disadvantage.

Download or read book Three Essays on Investments in Children s Human Capital written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays Examining Early Life Shocks that Affect Human Capital Production written by Uche Eseosa Ekhator and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation comprises three essays. The first examines the effect of health insurance on child health and healthcare utilization in Nigeria. It uses the implementation and expansion of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to introduce an exogenous variation in health insurance eligibility, a natural experiment that fits a difference-in-difference analysis. Findings from this essay suggest that health insurance decreases the prevalence of diarrhea and increases birthweight among children. It also increases the probability that children receive polio and diphtheria vaccines and increases the probability that children from middle-income households receive medical treatment for diarrhea. The second essay examines the effect of the Boko Haram Insurgency (BHI) on height-for-age z-scores, weight-for-age z-scores, weight-for-height z-scores, stunting, and wasting. It compares outcomes in Boko Haram high-active and low-active areas. A difference-in-difference analysis identifies the extensive margin effects while a regression analysis identifies the intensive margin effects. The essay uses data from the Nigerian Health and Demographic Survey and the Global Terrorism Database. The results suggest that the BHI reduces weight-for-age and weight-for-height z-scores and increases the probability of wasting. The evidence suggests that policies targeting healthcare services may mitigate the long-term impacts of the BHI on human capital production. Finally, the third essay examines the effect of neighborhood gangs on youth criminal behavior in the United States. It uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) and examines the effect of neighborhood gangs on youth delinquency and substance use. The essay finds that neighborhood gangs positively affect incidences of substance use by youths after accounting for individual heterogeneity. This finding suggests that policies providing early guidance to youths about the effects of neighborhood gangs should be encouraged. Youths exposed to neighborhood gangs should be sensitized on the dangers of substance use.

Download or read book Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-07-23 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Download or read book Dissertation Abstracts International written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Economic Perspectives on the Well being of Children and Mothers written by Katharina Heisig and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Early Life Shocks and Human Capital in a Developing World written by Mochamad Pasha and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Human Capital Over the Life Cycle written by Catherine Sofer and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: . . . I am convinced that it should occupy a high position on the desk of policymakers. . . This book constitutes a good state-of-the-art study in this field and paves the way for further research in this direction. Marie-Claire Villeval, Economic Record This attractive publication is carried out as a clear attempt to gain access to a wider audience, relaxing formal and technical details, which makes the lecture easier. . . An international comparison of literature or educational and labour experiences is provided in every contribution in the book, helping to obtain a wider perspective of the problems tackled. Carmen García and Julio López, Education Economics This book makes a novel contribution to economics of education in several key respects. It highlights a broad number of crucial factors over the individual s life cycle that underlie inequalities in education and in the labour market. . . It is amazing how limited our knowledge is about these interactions despite their high priority in national as well as EU-level policy-making. This is a timely book concerned with topics of high policy relevance. Moreover, the authors have well succeeded in their attempt to write "in a style that makes this work accessible to a wider audience", using the editor s words. It is most important that academics as well as politicians are made aware of the considerable knowledge gaps that still prevail in our understanding of the role of education and training for the individual s success or failure in school and in working life. Rita Asplund, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA), Finland In the last decade, changes occurring in the demand for skills have produced significant effect on the functioning of labour markets in Europe and elsewhere. The challenge posed by a knowledge based society for sustained growth has been at the centre of the European strategy for employment and has important implications for the design of labour market policies. This book brings together a wide range of contributions written by leading experts on key issues such as: schooling systems, transition from school to work and lifelong learning, thereby providing an essential reference for both researchers and policymakers. Claudio Lucifora, Università Cattolica, Italy Human Capital Over the Life Cycle synthesises comparative research on the processes of human capital formation in the areas of education and training in Europe, in relation to the labour market. The book proposes that one of the most important challenges faced by Europe today is to understand the link between education and training on the one hand and economic and social inequality on the other. The authors focus the analysis on three main aspects of the links between education and social inequality: educational inequality, differences in access to labour markets and differences in lifelong earnings and training. Almost all the stages in the life cycle are tracked from early childhood to stages late in the working life: firstly the characteristics and effects of schooling systems, then the transitions from school to work and, finally, human capital and the working career. Academics and researchers of European studies, labour economics and the economics of education will all find this novel and analytically sound book of interest, as will sociologists and policymakers in Europe.

Download or read book Securing the Future written by Sheldon Danziger and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2000-06-29 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than ever, the economic health of a country depends upon the skills, knowledge, and capacities of its people. How does a person acquire these human assets and how can we promote their development? Securing the Future assembles an interdisciplinary team of scholars to investigate the full range of factors—pediatric, psychological, social, and economic—that bear on a child's development into a well-adjusted, economically productive member of society. A central purpose of the volume is to identify sound interventions that will boost human assets, particularly among the disadvantaged. The book provides a comprehensive evaluation of current initiatives and offers a wealth of new suggestions for effective public and private investments in child development. While children from affluent, highly educated families have good quality child care and an expensive education provided for them, children from poor families make do with informal child care and a public school system that does not always meet their needs. How might we best redress this growing imbalance? The contributors to this volume recommend policies that treat academic attainment together with psychological development and social adjustment. Mentoring programs, for example, promote better school performance by first fostering a young person's motivation to learn. Investments made early in life, such as preschool education, are shown to have the greatest impact on later learning for the least cost. In their focus upon children, however, the authors do not neglect the important links between generations. Poverty and inequality harm the development of parents and children alike. Interventions that empower parents to fight for better services and better schools are also of great benefit to their children. Securing the Future shows how investments in child development are both a means to an end and an end in themselves. They benefit the child directly and they also help that child contribute to the well-being of society. This book points us toward more effective strategies for promoting the economic success and the social cohesion of future generations. A Volume in the Ford Foundation Series on Asset Building

Download or read book Essays in Experimental Development Economics and Human Capital Formation written by Rahul Mehrotra and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: