Intergenerational Effects of Early-Life Advantage: Lessons from a Primate Study

Amanda Dettmer (), James Heckman, Juan Pantano, Victor Ronda and Stephen Suomi ()
Additional contact information
Amanda Dettmer: Yale Child Study Center
Juan Pantano: Center for the Economics of Human Development
Stephen Suomi: National Institute of Child Health & Human Development

No 2020-064, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: This paper uses three decades of studies with Rhesus monkeys to investigate the intergenerational effects of early life advantage. Monkeys and their offspring were both randomly assigned to be reared together or apart from their mothers. We document significant intergenerational effects of maternal presence. We also estimate, for the first time, the intergenerational complementarity of early life advantage, where the intergenerational effects of maternal rearing are only present for offspring that were mother-reared. This finding suggests that parenting is the primary mechanism driving the intergenerational effects. Our paper demonstrates how studies of primates can inform human development.

Keywords: maternal influence; animal studies; early-life adversity; intergenerational treatment effects; intergenerational complementarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv and nep-neu
Note: ECI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Dettme ... ly-life-primates.pdf First version, August 12, 2020 (application/pdf)
http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Dettme ... rimates_APPENDIX.pdf Appendix (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Intergenerational Effects of Early-Life Advantage: Lessons from a Primate Study (2020)
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:hka:wpaper:2020-064

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jennifer Pachon ().