FAMILY LINKS IN CHILDREN'S HEALTH, EDUCATION AND INCOME

Rand Corporation, Santa Monica CA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Early investments in children are made on the premise that the prenatal period through early childhood present unique opportunities to produce healthy children and that child health is itself an investment in a child's entire future. This study will provide a fuller understanding of the roles the family plays in the determination of children's early health outcomes, cognitive development, education, and adult socio-economic success. One unique features of this study is that it focuses on the development of the child throughout the life cycle from fetal survival and birth outcomes to success in adult life. Specifically, the study will consider a wide range of child outcomes including: perinatal child health- fetal survival (mortality hazard), gestational age and birth weight; childhood human capital- height for age and cognitive development; and adult socio-economic success- education, earnings and spouse characteristics. These outcomes represent the development of the child's "quality" over the life cycle and are the result of both parental decisions concerning resource allocation and investments in children, and the stock of family resources and genetic endowments. In this way, the study design closely approximates consequences of early child development: outcomes from each life cycle phase become inputs to the next. Another important feature of the study is that it focuses on the roles of parental decisions and unobserved family endowments on child outcomes. It will analyze the determinants of these parental child investment choices including the roles of parental resources (father's and mother's age- adjusted permanent earnings), parental education, and observable outcomes of earlier born children, and other measured co-variates. In addition, the proposed study will explore unmeasured family factors that influence parental decisions that may also affect child outcomes directly, family endowments of health, and socio-economic success common to all the parents' children.