Investments in the human capital of the socially disadvantaged children: Effects on redistribution

Tim Lohse, Peter F. Lutz and Christian Thomann

Discussion Papers, Research Professorship & Project "The Future of Fiscal Federalism" from WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Abstract: Recently, early investments in the human capital of children from socially disadvantaged environments have attracted a great deal of attention. Programs of such early intervention, aiming at children's health and well-being, are spreading considerably in the U.S. and are currently tested in several European countries. In a discrete version of the Mirrlees model with a parents' and a children's generation we show the intra-generational and the inter-generational redistributional consequences of such intervention programs. It turns out that the parents' generation always loses when such intervention programs are implemented. Among the children's generation it is the rich who always benefit. Despite the expectation that early intervention puts the poor descendants in a better position, our analysis reveals that the poor among the children's generation may even be worse off if the effect of early intervention on their productivity is not large enough.

Keywords: Early Intervention; welfare; redistribution; taxation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H21 I14 I38 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/54581/1/682499463.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Investments in the Human Capital of the Socially Disadvantaged Children - Effects on Redistribution (2011)
Working Paper: Investments in the Human Capital of the Socially Disadvantaged Children - Effects on Redistribution (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:zbw:wzbfff:spii2011107

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers, Research Professorship & Project "The Future of Fiscal Federalism" from WZB Berlin Social Science Center Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().