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EARLY CHILDHOOD HEALTH AND SCHOOLING ATTAINMENT GAPS WITHIN AND ACROSS COUNTRIES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2018

Ray Miller
Ray Miller*
Affiliation:
Harvard University and Colorado State University
*
Address correspondence to: Ray Miller, Colorado State University, Department of Economics, Campus Delivery 1771, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA; e-mail: ray.miller@colostate.edu. Phone: 970-491-3970.
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Abstract

This paper develops a theory of human capital to investigate the role of early childhood health in explaining the large and persistent schooling gaps observed within and across countries. Quantitative analysis using the theory and data from 98 countries shows that early health inequalities within developingcountries strongly amplify later schooling gaps— counterfactually eliminating inequalities reduces schooling Ginis by an average of 18% in developing economies but has only mild effects in richer countries. Moreover, early health inequalities are found to be an important source of schooling variation across countries— universally equating early health to the average US level reduces the cross-country standard deviation of average schooling attainment by over 40%. Additional policy experiments reveal that the gains from early health interventions tend to be amplified by later educational investments in developing economies, while those targeting school-aged children may be limited if early health conditions are ignored.

Keywords

Human CapitalHealth InequalityEducationEarly Childhood
Type
Articles
Information
Macroeconomic Dynamics , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , June 2020 , pp. 807 - 859
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018

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Footnotes

Research reported in this publication was supported in part by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P30AG024409. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. I would like to say special thanks to Daniele Coen-Pirani, Marla Ripoll, Arie Beresteanu, M. Najeeb Shafiq, participants at the Midwest Macroeconomic and MEA annual meetings, as well as several anonymous referees for their helpful feedback and comments.

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