The Inter-Generational Transmission of Cognitive Abilities in Guatemala

María Calderón and John Hoddinott

No 3105, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: This paper examines early childhood development (ECD) outcomes and their association with family characteristics, investments, and environmental factors, with particular emphasis on the inter- generational transmission of cognitive abilities. The paper examines the causal relationship between parental cognitive abilities and ECD outcomes of their offspring using a rich data set from rural Guatemala that can account for such unobservable factors. A 10 percent increase in maternal Raven's scores increase children's Raven's scores by 7.8 percent. A 10 percent increase in maternal reading and vocabulary skills increases children's score on a standard vocabulary test by 5 percent. Effects are larger for older children, and the impact of maternal cognitive skills is larger than for paternal skills.

Keywords: IDB-WP-247; Early childhood development; Guatemala; cognitive development; inter-generational transmission of cognitive abilities; economic productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J24 N36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english ... ies-in-Guatemala.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Inter-Generational Transmission of Cognitive Abilities in Guatemala (2011)
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:idb:brikps:3105

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Felipe Herrera Library ().