Does Television Rot Your Brain? New Evidence from the Coleman Study

Matthew Aaron Gentzkow () and Jesse Shapiro ()

No 12021, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We use heterogeneity in the timing of television's introduction to different local markets to identify the effect of preschool television exposure on standardized test scores later in life. Our preferred point estimate indicates that an additional year of preschool television exposure raises average test scores by about .02 standard deviations. We are able to reject negative effects larger than about .03 standard deviations per year of television exposure. For reading and general knowledge scores, the positive effects we find are marginally statistically significant, and these effects are largest for children from households where English is not the primary language, for children whose mothers have less than a high school education, and for non-white children. To capture more general effects on human capital, we also study the effect of childhood television exposure on school completion and subsequent labor market earnings, and again find no evidence of a negative effect.

JEL-codes: I21 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul
Date: 2006-02
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