Early Motherhood and Offspring Human Capital in India

Marcelloa Perez-Alvarez and Marta Favara

No 2020-15, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: Using panel data from India, this paper investigates the effect of early maternal age on offspring human capital. The analysis relies on mother fixed effects to allow for mother unobserved heterogeneity and employs a variety of empirical strategies to address remaining concerns related to sibling-specific unobserved heterogeneity. Our results indicate that children born to early mothers are shorter for their age and perform poorer in math, with stronger effects for (female) offspring born to very young mothers. By exploring the evolution of effects over time for the first time in the literature, we find that the height effect weakens as children grow older, while the cognition effect surges in early adolescence. Further analysis suggests both biological and behavioral factors as transmission channels.

Keywords: Early Motherhood; Health; Cognition; Nutrition; Fertility; Human Capital; Child Development; Gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 I25 J13 J16 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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