Actors in the Child Development Process

Daniela Del Boca, Christopher Flinn, Ewout Verriest and Matthew Wiswall ()

No 25596, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We construct and estimate a model of child development in which both the parents and children make investments in the child’s skill development. In each period of the development process, partially altruistic parents act as the Stackelberg leader and the child the follower when setting her own study time. We then extend this non-cooperative form of interaction by allowing parents to offer incentives to the child to increase her study time, at some monitoring cost. We show that this incentive scheme, a kind of internal conditional cash transfer, produces efficient outcomes and, in general, increases the child’s cognitive ability. In addition to heterogeneity in resources (wage offers and non-labor income), the model allows for heterogeneity in preferences both for parents and children, and in monitoring costs. Like their parents, children are forward-looking, but we allow children and parents to have different preferences and for children to have age-varying discount rates, becoming more “patient” as they age. Using detailed time diary information on the allocation of parent and child time linked to measures of child cognitive ability, we estimate several versions of the model. Using model estimates, we explore the impact of various government income transfer policies on child development.

JEL-codes: J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-neu
Note: CH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Actors in the Child Development Process (2019)
Working Paper: Actors in the Child Development Process (2019)
Working Paper: Actors in the Child Development Process (2019)
Working Paper: Actors in the Child Development Process (2018)
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