Human Capital Development and Parental Investment in India

Orazio Attanasio, Costas Meghir and Emily Nix
Additional contact information
Orazio Attanasio: University College London, IFS, NBER
Emily Nix: Dept. of Economics, UCL

No 2026R, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: We estimate production functions for cognition and health for children aged 1-12 in India, where over 70 million children aged 0-5 are at risk of developmental deficits. The inputs into the production functions include parental background, prior child cognition and health, and child investments. We use income and local prices to control for the endogeneity of investments. We find that cognition is sensitive to investments throughout the age range we consider, while health is mainly affected by early investments. We also find that inputs are complementary, and crucially that health is very important in determining cognition. Our paper contributes in understanding how investments and early health outcomes are important in child development.

Keywords: Early childhood development; Human capital; India; Nonlinear factor models; Young lives survey; Health; Cognition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 I15 I25 I32 J13 J24 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2015-12, Revised 2017-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-ltv and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d20/d2026-r.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Working Paper: Human Capital Development and Parental Investment in India (2019)
Working Paper: Human Capital Development and Parental Investment in India (2017)
Working Paper: Human Capital Development and Parental Investment in India (2015)
Working Paper: Human Capital Development and Parental Investment in India (2015)
Working Paper: Human Capital Development and Parental Investment in India (2015)
Working Paper: Human Capital Development and Parental Investment in India (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2026r

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Cowles Foundation, Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA
The price is None.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Brittany Ladd ().