EARLY CHILDHOOD HUMAN CAPITAL INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN

Early childhood investment is extremely important in forming the human capital. In order to understand the investment during this period, a human capital production function which takes parental skills, and investments as inputs and produce outcomes for children is needed. A well-known problem with the estimation of such production functions is the simultaneity of the inputs (time spent with children and income). Therefore the education production function suffers from a similar problem. However, because the output of the intergenerational education production (i.e., completed education level) is determined across generations while the inputs, such as parental time investment, are determined over the life-cycle of each generation, one can treat these inputs as predetermined and use instruments from within the system to estimate the production function. This procedure in a systems of equations framework can be estimated by a three stage least squares (3SLS) estimator. Using data on two generations from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), this paper estimates the effect of parental characteristics and human capital investments on their children’s education outcomes in a 3SLS framework.

EARLY CHILDHOOD HUMAN CAPITAL INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN

Early childhood investment is extremely important in forming the human capital. In order to understand the investment during this period, a human capital production function which takes parental skills, and investments as inputs and produce outcomes for children is needed. A well-known problem with the estimation of such production functions is the simultaneity of the inputs (time spent with children and income). Therefore the education production function suffers from a similar problem. However, because the output of the intergenerational education production (i.e., completed education level) is determined across generations while the inputs, such as parental time investment, are determined over the life-cycle of each generation, one can treat these inputs as predetermined and use instruments from within the system to estimate the production function. This procedure in a systems of equations framework can be estimated by a three stage least squares (3SLS) estimator. Using data on two generations from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), this paper estimates the effect of parental characteristics and human capital investments on their children’s education outcomes in a 3SLS framework.

___

  • BECKER, G. S., “A Treatise on the Family”, Harvard University Press, 1981.
  • BECKER, G. S., and Tomes, N., “Human Capital and the Rise and Fall of Families”, Journal of Labor Economics, 4(3), 1986, pp: 1-39.
  • BERNAL, R., “The Effect of Maternal Employment and Child Care on Children’s Cognitive Development”, International Economic Review, 49 (4), 2008, pp: 1173-1209.
  • BJÖRKLUND, A. and Chadwick, L., “Intergenerational Income Mobility in Permanent and Separated Families”, Economics Letters, 80(2), 2003, pp: 239-246.
  • BLOOME, D., “Family Structure, Race and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States”, Unpublished Manuscript, University of Michigan, 2014.
  • BURTLESS, G., “Effects of Growing Wage Disparities and Changing Family Composition on the US Income Distribution”, European Economic Review, 43(4), 1999, pp: 853-865.
  • CAMERON, S. V. and Heckman, J., “The Dynamics of Educational Attainment for Black, Hispanic, and White Males”, Journal of Political Economy, 109(3), 2001, pp: 455-499.
  • CARNEIRO, P., Heckman, J., and Masterov, D. V., “Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences in Premarket Factors”, Journal of Law and Economics 48(1), 2005.
  • CUNHA, F., and Heckman, J., “The Technology of Skill Formation”, American Economic Review, 97 (2), , pp: 31-47. CUNHA, F., and Heckman, J., “Formulating, Identifying and Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation”, Journal of Human Resources, 43(4), 2008, pp: 738-782.
  • CUNHA, F., and Heckman, J., “The Economics and Psychology of Inequality and Human Development”, Journal of the European Economic Association, 7(2-3), 2009, pp: 320-364.
  • CUNHA, F., Heckman, J., Lochner, L. and Masterov, D., “Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation”, In E. A. Hanushek, & F. Welch (Eds.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, Chap. 12. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2008, pp. 697-812.
  • COUCH, K. A., and Lillard, D. R., “Divorce, Educational Attainment, and the Earnings Mobility Of Sons”, Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 18(3), 1997, pp: 231-245.
  • DATCHER-LOURY, L., “Effects of Mother’s Home Time on Children’s Schooling”, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 70(3), 1988, pp: 367-373.
  • DEL BOCA, D., Flinn, C. and Wiswall, M., “Household Choices and Child Development”, The Review of Economic Studies, 81(1), 2014, pp: 137-185.
  • ELLWOOD, D. T., and Jencks C., “The Uneven Spread Of Single-Parent Families: What Do We Know? Where Do We Look For Answers?”, Social inequality, 1, 2004, pp: 3-77.
  • FRYER, R., “Racial Inequality in the 21st Century: The Declining Significance Of Discrimination”, in Handbook of Labor Economics, Vol. 4, 2011, pp: 855-971.
  • GAYLE, G-L., Golan, L. and Soytas, M. A., “What Accounts for the Racial Gap in Time Allocation and Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital?”, Unpublished manuscript, Washington University in St. Louis, Department of Economics, 2014a.
  • GAYLE, G-L., Golan, L. and Soytas, M. A., “Family Structure and Intergenerational Income Mobility”, Unpublished manuscript, Washington University in St. Louis, Department of Economics, b. GURYAN, J., Hurst E., and Kearney, M., “Parental Education and Parental Time with Children”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22(3), 2008, pp: 23-46.
  • HECKMAN, J., “Schools, Skills and Synapses”, Economic Inquiry, 46(3), 2008, pp: 289--324.
  • HECKMAN, J., Moon, S. H., Pinto, R., Savelyev, P. and Yavitz A., “Analyzing Social Experiments as Implemented: A Reexamination of the Evidence From the HighScope Perry Preschool Program”, Quantitative Economics, 1(1), 2010a, pp: 1-46.
  • HECKMAN, J., Moon, S. H., Pinto, R., Savelyev, P. and Yavitz A., “The Rate Of Return to the Highscope Perry Preschool Program”, Journal of Public Economics, 94, 2010b, pp: 114-128.
  • HECKMAN, J., Pinto, R. and Savelyev, P., “Understanding the Mechanisms through Which an Influential Early Childhood Program Boosted Adult Outcomes”, American Economic Review, 103(6), 2013, pp: 2052-86.
  • HECKMAN, J., and Mosso, S., “The Economics of Human Development and Social Mobility”, Annual Review of Economics, 6, 2014, pp: 689-733.
  • HILL, M. S., Russell, C. and Stafford, F. P., “Allocation of time to preschool children and educational opportunity”, Journal of Human Resources, 9(3), 1074, pp: 323-341.
  • HILL, M. S., Russell, C. and Stafford, F. P., “Parental Care of Children: Time Diary Estimates of Quantity, Predictability, and Variety”, The Journal of Human Resources, 15(2), 1980, pp: 219-239.
  • HILL, M. S., “The wage effects of marital status and children”, Journal of Human Resources, 14(4), 1979, pp: 579-594.
  • HUGGETT, M., Ventura, G. and Yaron A., “Sources of Lifetime Inequality”, American Economic Review, (7), 2011, pp: 2923-54.
  • KEANE, M. P. and Wolpin, K. I., “The career decisions of young men”, Journal of Political Economy, (3), 1997, pp: 473-522.
  • LEE, S. Y. and Seshadri, A., “On the intergenerational transmission of economic status”, Unpublished manuscript, University of Wisconsin--Madison, Department of Economics, 2014.
  • LEIBOWITZ, A., “Parental inputs and children’s achievement”, The Journal of Human Resources, 12(2), , pp: 242-251. MCLANAHAN, S. and Percheski, C., “Family structure and the reproduction of inequalities”, Annual. Review of Sociololgy, 34, 2008, pp: 257-276.
  • MARTIN, M. A., “Family structure and income inequality in families with children, 1976 to 2000”, Demography, 43(3), 2006, pp: 421-445.
  • MARTIN, M. A., “Family Structure and the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Advantage”, Social Science Research, 41(1), 2012, pp: 33-47.
  • MCLANAHAN, S., “Diverging Destinies: How Children Are Faring Under the Second Demographic Transition”, Demography, 41(4), 2004, pp: 607-627.
  • RIOS-RULL, J-V. and Sanchez-Marcos, V., “College Attainment of Women”, Review of Economic Dynamics, (4), 2002, pp: 965-998.
  • ROMER, P., “Human capital and growth: Theory and evidence”, Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, 32(1), 1990, pp: 251-286. Appendix