The impacts of early childhood investment: an approach through latent cognitive skills

Data
2018-05-16
Orientador(res)
Pinto, Cristine Campos de Xavier
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This work contributes to the literature of human capital formation by estimating the impact of early childhood investment (by means of preschool attendance) over cognitive skill development. Using a longitudinal panel dataset for a single municipality, we draw the distribution of latent cognitive and non-cognitive factors and consider a dynamic model of skill formation. We find our Constant Elasticity Substitution (CES) production function to be a Cobb-Douglas. The complementarity and share parameters of the CES are stable in diverse specifications tested. We find that early investment matters for cognitive skill accumulation during childhood. Preliminar estimation for long-term cognitive production presents evidence of self-productivity (skill begets skill). Since cognitive skill is persistent overtime, early childhood investment has a positive cumulative impact in the long-term by boosting cognitive skills in earlier stages.


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Área do Conhecimento