Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T10:17:26.522Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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.

References

Ahuja, A., Baird, S., Hicks, J. H., Kremer, M., Miguel, E. and Powers, S. (2015) When should governments subsidize health? The case of mass deworming. The World Bank Economic Review 29, S9–S24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aksan, A.-M. and Chakraborty, S. (2013) Childhood disease and the precautionary demand for children. Journal of Population Economics 26(3), 855–885.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aksan, A.-M. and Chakraborty, S. (2014) Mortality versus morbidity in the demographic transition. European Economic Review 70, 470–492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alan, S. and Browning, M. (2010) Estimating intertemporal allocation parameters using synthetic residual estimation. The Review of Economic Studies 77(4), 1231–1261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barro, R. and Lee, J. (2013). A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950-2010. Journal of Development Economics 104, 184–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, G. S. (1960) An economic analysis of fertility. In Demographic and Economic Change in Developed Countries, pp. 209–240. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Behrman, J. R. (1996) The impact of health and nutrition on education. The World Bank Research Observer 11, 23–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bils, M. and Klenow, P. J. (2000) Does schooling cause growth? American Economic Review 90(5), 1160–1183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blau, D. and Currie, J. (2006) Pre-school, day care, and after-school care: Who’ s minding the kids? In: Hanushek, E., and Welch, F. (eds.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume 2, Chapter 20, pp. 1163–1278. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Bollen, K. A., Glanville, J. L. and Stecklov, G. (2007) Socio-economic status, permanent income, and fertility: A latent-variable approach. Population Studies 61(1), 15–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cagetti, M. (2003) Wealth accumulation over the life cycle and precautionary savings. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics 21(3), 339–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castello, A. and Domenech, R. (2002) Human capital inequality and economic growth: Some new evidence. The Economic Journal 112, C187–C200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caucutt, E. and Lochner, L. (2006) Borrowing constraints on families with young children. In: Innovation in Education, pp. 39–48. Cleveland, OH: Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.Google Scholar
Caucutt, E. and Lochner, L. (2012) Early and Late Human Capital Investments, Borrowing Constraints, and the Family. Working Paper: No 18493, NBER.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caucutt, E. M., Lochner, L. and Park, Y. (2017) Correlation, consumption, confusion, or constraints: Why do poor children perform so poorly? The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 119(1), 102–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, J., Baer, B. and Weber, J. W. (2014) Economic growth and evolution: Parental preference for quality and quantity of offspring. Macroeconomic Dynamics, 18(08), 1733–1796.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connolly, H. C. and Gottschalk, P. (2006) Differences in wage growth by education level: Do less-educated workers gain less from work experience? IZA Discussion Paper: No. 2331.Google Scholar
Cordoba, J. and Ripoll, M. (2013) What explains schooling differences across countries? Journal of Monetary Economics 60(2), 184–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunha, F. (2005) The complementarity and self productivity of human capital investments in a SDGE economy with altruism and lifetime liquidity constraints. 2005 Meeting Papers 351, Society for Economic Dynamics.Google Scholar
Cunha, F. and Heckman, J. (2007) The technology of skill formation. American Economic Review 97(2), 31–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunha, F., Heckman, J., Lochner, L. and Masterov, D. (2006) Interpreting the evidence on life cycle skill formation. In: Hanushek, E., and Welch, F. (eds.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume 1, Chapter 12, pp. 697–812. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Cunha, F., Heckman, J. and Schennach, S. (2010) Estimating the technology of cognitive and noncognitive skill formation. Ecnometrica 78(3), 883–931.Google ScholarPubMed
Currie, J. (2009) Healthy, wealthy, and wise: Socioeconomic status, poor health in child-hood, and human capital development. Journal of Economic Literature 47(1), 87–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, J. and Vogl, T. (2013) Early-life health and adult circumstance in developing countries. Annual Review of Economics 5(1), 1–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cutler, D. M., Lange, F., Meara, E., Richards-Shubik, S. and Ruhm, C. J. (2011). Rising educational gradients in mortality: The role of behavioral risk factors. Journal of Health Economics 30(6), 1174–1187.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Del Boca, D., Flinn, C. and Wiswall, M. (2014) Household choices and child development. The Review of Economic Studies 81, 137–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doepke, M. (2005) Child mortality and fertility decline: Does the Barro-Becker model fit the facts? Journal of Population Economics 18(2), 337–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duncan, G. and Brooks-Gunn, J. (1997) Consequences of Growing Up Poor. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Duncan, G., Yeung, W., Brooks-Gunn, J. and Smith, J. (1998) How much does childhood poverty affect the life chances of children? American Sociological Review 63(3), 406–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eide, E. R. and Showalter, M. H. (2011) Estimating the relation between health and education: What do we know and what do we need to know? Economics of Education Review 30(5), 778–791.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erosa, A., Koreshkova, T. and Restuccia, D. (2010) How important is human capital? A quantitative theory assessment of world income inequality. Review of Economic Studies 77(4), 1421–1449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gollin, D. (2002) Getting income shares right. Journal of Political Economy 110(2), 458–474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gourinchas, P.-O. and Parker, J. A. (2002) Consumption over the life cycle. Econometrica 70(1), 47–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gunnsteinsson, S., Adhvaryu, A., Christian, P., Labrique, A., Sugimoto, J., Shamim, A. A. and West, K. P. Jr. (2016) Resilience to early life shocks. Working Paper.Google Scholar
Hansen, C. W., Jensen, P. S. and Lønstrup, L. (2018) The fertility decline in the United States: Schooling and income. Macroeconomic Dynamics 22(6), 1584–1612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heckman, J. J. and Mosso, S. (2014) The economics of human development and social mobility. Annual Review of Economics 6(1), 689–733.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hertz, T., Jayasundera, T., Piraino, P., Selcuk, S., Smith, N. and Verashchagina, A. (2007) The inheritance of education inequality: International comparisons and fifty-year trends. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy 7(2), 1–48.Google Scholar
Hintermaier, T. and Koeniger, W. (2010) The method of endogenous gridpoints with occasionally binding constraints among endogenous variables. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 34(10), 2074–2088.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, D. and Duncan, G. (1999) Using sibling samples to assess the effect of childhood family income on completed schooling. Unpublished Manuscript.Google Scholar
Lino, M. (2006) Expenditures on Children by Families, 2005. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, pp. 1528–2005. Miscellaneous Publication.Google Scholar
Lochner, L. and Monge-Naranjo, A. (2011) The nature of credit constraints and human capital. American Economic Review 101(6), 2487–2529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Madsen, J. (2018) Health-led growth since 1800. Macroeconomic Dynamics 22(4), 961–1000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manuelli, R. E. and Seshadri, A. (2014) Human capital and the wealth of nations. American Economic Review 104(9), 2736–2762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
OECD (2016) Education at a Glance 2016: OECD Indicators. Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Restuccia, D. and Urrutia, C. (2004) Intergenerational persistence of earnings: The role of early and college education. American Economic Review 94(5), 1354–1378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Restuccia, D. and Vandenbroucke, G. (2014) Explaining educational attainment across countries and over time. Review of Economic Dynamics 17(4), 824–841.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenzweig, M. R. and Wolpin, K. I. (1980) Testing the quantity-quality fertility model: The use of twins as a natural experiment. Econometrica 48(1), 227–240.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosenzweig, M. R. and Zhang, J. (2009) Do population control policies induce more human capital investment? Twins, birth weight and China’ s one-child policy. The Review of Economic Studies 76(3), 1149–1174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rossin-Slater, M. and Wüst, M. (2017). What is the added value of preschool? Long-term impacts and interactions with a health intervention. Working Paper: No. 22700, NBER.Google Scholar
Snyder, T. D., Dillow, S. A. and Hoffman, C. M. (2009) Digest of Education Statistics 2008 (NCES 2009-020). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.Google Scholar
Strulik, H. and Weisdorf, J. (2014) How child cost and survival shaped the Industrial Revolution and the demographic transition. Macroeconomic Dynamics 18(1), 114–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tauchen, G. (1986) Finite state Markov-chain approximations to univariate and vector autoregressions. Economics Letters 20(2), 177–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todd, P. and Wolpin, K. (2007) The production of cognitive achievement in children: Home, school, and racial test score gaps. Journal of Human Capital 1(11), 91–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vasilakis, C. (2017). Fighting poverty and child malnutrition: On the design of foreign aid policies. Macroeconomic Dynamics 21(08), 1935–1956.CrossRefGoogle Scholar