The Economics of Human Development and Social Mobility

Abstract

This paper distills and extends recent research on the economics of human development and social mobility. It summarizes the evidence from diverse literatures on the importance of early life conditions in shaping multiple life skills and the evidence on critical and sensitive investment periods for shaping different skills. It presents economic models that rationalize the evidence and unify the treatment effect and family influence literatures. The evidence on the empirical and policy importance of credit constraints in forming skills is examined. There is little support for the claim that untargeted income transfer policies to poor families significantly boost child outcomes. Mentoring, parenting, and attachment are essential features of successful families and interventions to shape skills at all stages of childhood. The next wave of family studies will better capture the active role of the emerging autonomous child in learning and responding to the actions of parents, mentors and teachers.

Money vs. Time: Family Income, Maternal Labor Supply, and Child Development

“…Parental inputs determine child development (Cunha and Heckman, 2008;Cunha et al, 2010;Del Boca et al, 2014;Heckman and Mosso, 2014;Agostinelli and Wiswall, 2016). The choice to increase maternal labor supply may generate a displacement effect in terms of maternal investment in the formation of children's skills.…”

“…An increase in maternal hours worked generates an income effect (higher earnings) and a substitution effect (displacement of maternal time) (Heckman and Mosso, 2014;Del Boca et al, 2014).…”

“…An increase in maternal hours worked generates an income effect, with additional resources coming from a boost in labor income. At the same time, changes in maternal hours worked can also generate a substitution effect, with changes in the time that mothers allocate to child care (Heckman and Mosso, 2014;Del Boca et al, 2014). Moreover, this paper is related to previous works that consider the effect of time and monetary resources on children by estimating a structural model of household choices and child development (see Del Boca et al, 2014;Mullins, 2016).…”

Changes in educational inequalities in Poland. Comments on Zbigniew Sawiński’s article “Education reform and inequality: fifteen years of new lower secondary schools in Poland”

“…the SES of the student's parents) and the unobserved variables. The problems relating to interpreting changes over time are well illustrated by the framework of the dynamic development of skills proposed by James Heckman and colleagues (Cunha and Heckman, 2007;2009;Heckman and Mosso, 2014;cf. Raudenbush and Eschmann, 2015).…”

Introduction: Opportunity in America—Setting the Stage

“…These factors comprise family structure and maternal health , family income and wealth, parenting practices, social institutions, and neighborhood characteristics. He employs the term dynamic complementarity to describe how the concatenation of advantages (i.e., open gates to opportunity) results in the amplifi cation of their individual effects (compare to Heckman on the virtuous cycle begun by effective early interventions; Heckman and Masterov 2007 ;Heckman and Mosso 2014 ). He expresses grave concerns regarding the implications of current trends in inequality of opportunity for intergenerational mobility and, like Braun, offers some policy prescriptions for halting the polarization we are now observing.…”