Locus of control and its intergenerational implications for early childhood skill formation

Warn Nuarpear Lekfuangfu, Francesca Cornaglia, Nattavudh Powdthavee and Nele Warrinnier

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We propose a model in which parents have a subjective belief about the impact of their investment on the early skill formation of their children. This subjective belief is determined in part by locus of control (LOC), i.e., the extent to which individuals believe that their actions can influence future outcomes. Using a unique British cohort survey, we show that maternal LOC measured during the 1st trimester strongly predicts early and late child cognitive and noncognitive outcomes. Further, we utilize the variation in maternal LOC to improve the specification typically used in the estimation of parental investment effects on child development.

Keywords: Locus of control; parental investment; human capital accumulation; early skill formation; ALSPAC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-ltv and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59271/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Locus of Control and its Intergenerational Implications for Early Childhood Skill Formation (2018)
Working Paper: Locus of control and its intergenerational implications forearly childhood skill formation (2017)
Working Paper: Locus of Control and Its Intergenerational Implications for Early Childhood Skill Formation (2016)
Working Paper: Locus of Control and Its Intergenerational Implications for Early Childhood Skill Formation (2014)
Working Paper: Locus of Control and Its Intergenerational Implications for Early Childhood Skill Formation (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:59271

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().