Parental Investment and Child Development
Abstract: This paper studies the formation of cognitive skills, noncognitive skills and health. It analyzes the process by which current levels of cognitive skills, noncognitive skills and health depend on past cognitive and noncognitive abilities, past health, parental cognitive and noncognitive abilities and parental investments. I estimate dynamic, nested CES production function models of human capital with endogenous parental investments to examine dynamic complementarities and interactions among different inputs and factors in forming child human capital. I use a maximum likelihood approach to estimate the joint distribution of latent factors, which are proxied by observable measures and dynamic CES production functions of human capital. My results show strong effects of parental investments on child cognitive skills, noncognitive skills and health and indicate that parental investments are driven by parental skills and resources. I find evidence that there are dynamic complementarities among the inputs in human capital production, implying that returns to investments are higher for children with better initial conditions. I also find evidence of high levels of self-productivity and the existence of cross-productivity from noncognitive skills and health to cognitive skills and from cognitive and noncognitive skills to health.
Transition from School to Work: The Role of
Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills
Abstract: This paper examines the effects of cognitive and noncognitive skills on college completion decisions and subsequent earnings. I develop and estimate a structural model that explicitly embeds a Roy model of endogenous education choices and subsequent earnings within a latent factor model. This approach allows for the identification of latent competencies to capture multiple skill dimensions more accurately and correct for measurement errors in observed measures of skills. It also allows for the isolation of the effects of these skills on earnings into components explained by schooling and productivity. Furthermore, this approach solves the endogeneity and reverse causality problems of skills, schooling and earnings by excluding education variables from earnings equations, introducing latent skills and using panel data with skills and outcomes observed at different times. The findings indicate that both cognitive and noncognitive skills in adolescence are associated with college completion and better earnings in early adulthood. Both types of skills are important in directly determining earnings and indirectly determining earnings through their influence on schooling.
The Consequences of Bullying Victimization on Health
and Psychosocial Outcomes in Young Children
Abstract: This paper uses a structural
model combined with an instrumental variable strategy to deal with the
endogeneity and measurement error issues of bullying to study the consequences
of peer victimization on a range of health and psychosocial indicators. The findings
indicate that peer victimization has strong effects on subjective well-being,
alcohol consumption and emotional and mental distress of children. These
results are consistent with evidence from both developed and developing
countries that bullying has substantial consequences on health risks and
psychosocial outcomes. I do not find evidence of associations between bullying
victimization and self-rated health.