Health and skill formation in early childhood

Pietro Biroli (pietrobiroli@gmail.com)

No 17, UBSCENTER - Working Papers from UBS International Center of Economics in Society - Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: This paper analyzes the developmental origins and the evolution of health, cognitive, and socio-emotional skills during early childhood, from age 0 to 5. We explicitly model the dynamic interactions of health with the child’s behavior and cognitive skills, as well as the role of parental investment. A dynamic factor model corrects for the presence of measurement error in the proxy for the latent traits. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), we find that children’s capabilities strongly interact and build on each other: health is an important determinant of early socio-emotional development; in turn socio-emotional skills have a positive impact on the evolution of both health and cognitive functions; on the other side, the effect of cognitive abilities on health is negligible. Furthermore, all facets of human capital display a high degree of persistence. Finally, mother’s investments are an important determinant of the child’s health, cognitive, and socio-emotional development early in life.

Keywords: Human capital; health; early childhood; family investment; intergenerational transmission; ALSPAC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I12 I14 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-hea
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Related works:
Working Paper: Health and Skill Formation in Early Childhood (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:uceswp:017

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