Self Investments of Adolescents and their Cognitive Development

Daniela Del Boca, Chiara Monfardini and Cheti Nicoletti

No 6868, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: While a large literature has focused on the impact of parental investments on child cognitive development, very little is known about the role of child's own investments. Information on how children invest their time separately from parents is probably little informative for babies and toddlers, but it becomes more and more important in later stages of life, such as adolescence, when children start to take decisions independently. By using the Child Development Supplement of the PSID (Panel Study of Income Dynamics), we model the production of cognitive ability of adolescents and extend the set of inputs to include the child's own time investments. Looking at investments during adolescence, we find that child's investments matter more than mother's investments. On the contrary, looking at investments during childhood, it is the mother's investments that are more important. Our results are obtained accounting for potential unobserved child's and family's endowments and are robust across several specifications and samples, e.g. considering and not considering father's investments and non-intact families.

Keywords: cognitive ability; child development; adolescence; time-use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2012-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-ltv and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - published as 'Parental and child time and cognitive development of adolescents' in: Journal of Labor Economics, 2017, 35 (2), 565-608

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Related works:
Working Paper: Self investments of adolescents and their cognitive development (2012)
Working Paper: Self investments of adolescents and their cognitive development (2012)
Working Paper: Self investments of adolescents and their cognitive development (2012)
Working Paper: Self investments of adolescents and their cognitive development (2012)
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