Human Capital Development: New Evidence on the Production of Socio-Emotional Skills

Mark Mitchell, Marta Favara, Catherine Porter and Alan Sanchez

No 13804, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We estimate a dynamic model of multidimensional human capital development from childhood through adolescence and into early adulthood for a Peruvian cohort born in 1994. We exploit multiple measures of cognitive and socio-emotional skills and a latent factor structure to estimate flexible skills production functions between the ages of 8 and 22. We focus particularly on socio-emotional skill development, and provide the first estimates of such skill production over such a long period in a developing country context. In the last period, when individuals reach adulthood at age 22, we show that socio-emotional skills can be separated into two distinct domains - social skills and task effectiveness skills- which develop differently especially with regard to time use and cross-productivity with cognition. We find that individuals with higher task effectiveness are less likely to have engaged in risky behaviours such as smoking, taking drugs, and engaging with gangs.

Keywords: dynamic factor analysis; child development; human capital; socio-emotional skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C38 J13 J24 O15 O54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 76 pages
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lam
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published online in: Journal of Human Resources , 06 June 2023, 1120-11342R

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Working Paper: Human Capital Development: New Evidence on the Production of Socio-emotional Skills (2022)
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