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To explore the role of child care policies in the development of early cognitive skills, I embed a value-added cognitive achievement production function into a dynamic, discrete choice model of maternal labor supply and child care decisions. I use the model to explore how two types of child care policies, Head Start and child care price subsidies, affect child care use and quality decisions and how those decisions in turn affect cognitive achievement. To estimate the model, I use rich panel data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey -Birth cohort (ECLS-B). There are three key findings: (1) Expanding Head Start to children who are currently not eligible has beneficial effects on cognitive achievement, because even children from relatively high quality home environments spend significant amounts of time in low quality child care. An universal expansion of Head Start increases average cognitive achievement scores by 0.21 standard deviations at kindergarten entry.(2) For the typical subsidy-eligible population, child care subsidies have small positive effects on cognitive skills by inducing children from low quality home environments to enter relatively higher quality child care environments. Six months of exposure to a subsidy program increases cognitive achievement scores by .036 standard deviations on average. (3) Without Head Start the black-white achievement gap at kindergarten entry increases by 9 percent and child care subsidies decrease the black-white achievement gap at kindergarten entry by 3 percent. Degree TypeDissertation Degree Name

This paper estimates a height production function using data from a randomized nutrition intervention conducted in rural Guatemala from 1969 -1977. Using the experimental intervention as an instrument, the IV estimates of the effect of calories on height are an order of magnitude larger than the OLS estimates. Information from a unique measurement error process in the calorie data, counterfactuals results from the estimated model and external evidence from migration studies suggest that the divergence between the OLS and IV estimates is driven by the LATE interpretation of IV. Attenuation bias corrected OLS estimates of the height production function imply that calories gaps in early childhood can explain at most 16% of the height gap between Guatemalan children and the US born children of Guatemalan immigrants. This paper estimates a height production function using data from a randomized nutrition intervention conducted in rural Guatemala from 1969 -1977. Using the experimental intervention as an instrument, the IV estimates of the effect of calories on height are an order of magnitude larger than the OLS estimates. Information from a unique measurement error process in the calorie data, counterfactuals results from the estimated model and external evidence from migration studies suggest that the divergence between the OLS and IV estimates is driven by the LATE interpretation of IV. Attenuation bias corrected OLS estimates of the height production function imply that calories gaps in early childhood can explain at most 16% of the height gap between Guatemalan children and the US born children of Guatemalan immigrants. (JEL: I12, I15, O15)

Using panel data on Japanese mothers, this paper estimates the impact of fertility on maternal labor supply using twins as an instrument for the total number of children. We find that having twins actually has a longer term positive impact on maternal labor force participation. To understand this result, we present evidence that spacing effects and the cost of children are particularly salient in Japan and differ in important ways between twins and non-twin families of the same size. Implications for fertility and labor supply policy in Japan are discussed.

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