If household.income is pooled and then allocated to maximize welfare, then income under the control of mothers and fathers should have the same impact on demand. With survey data on family health and nutrition in Brazil, the equality of parental income effects is rejected. Unearned income in the hands of mothers has a bigger effect on her family's health than income under the control of fathers; for child survival probabilities the effect is almost twenty times bigger. The common preference (or neoclassical) model of the household is rejected. If unearned income is measured with error and income is pooled then the ratio of maternal to paternal income effects should be the same; equality of the ratios cannot be rejected. There is also evidence for

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Little is known about the long-term effects of participation in Head Start. This paper draws on unique non-experimental data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to provide new evidence on the effects of participation in Head Start on schooling attainment, earnings, and criminal behavior. Among whites, participation in Head Start is associated with a significantly increased probability of completing high school and attending college, and we find some evidence of elevated earnings in one's early twenties. African Americans who participated in Head Start are significantly less likely to have been charged or convicted of a crime. The evidence also suggests that there are positive spillovers from older children who attended Head Start to their younger siblings. This paper provides evidence on the longer-term effects of Head Start using non-experimental data drawn from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (PSID). There are three features of the data that are key for this study. First, in 1995, special questions about participation in Head Start and other preschools were added to the interviews. These questions make it possible to ask whether Head Start confers any longer term benefits since they were asked of adult respondents age 30 and below who were eligible to participate in Head Start during the late sixties and seventies. Second, because the PSID is a panel which stretches back over a quarter century, we are able to control for family background and the environment in which each respondent grew up in great detail. Third, it is possible to evaluate the longer-term effects of Head Start programs that were actually in existence at the time the respondents were young children. This is important since most of the evidence cited in support of early intervention comes from model programs such as Perry Preschool which were funded at much higher levels than Head Start. Moreover, in contrast with the PSID which is a large, nationally representative data set, experimental evaluations tend to focus on relatively small, homogeneous populations. For both of these reasons, critics have questioned the generalizability of model evaluations. ElianaFour indicators of economic and social success in adulthood are examined. We find that, for whites, participation in Head Start is associated with a significantly increased probability of completing high school and attending college as well as elevated earnings in one's early twenties.African Americans who participated in Head Start are significantly less likely to have been charged or convicted of a crime. We also find suggestive evidence that African-American males who attended Head Start are more likely than their siblings to have completed high school. Finally, we uncover some evidence of positive spillovers from older children who attended Head Start to their younger siblings, particularly with regard to criminal behavior. The rest of the paper is laid out as follows. First, we provide some background regarding the Head Start program and previous research. Second, the PS...

Although there is a broad hi-partisan support for Head Start, the evidence of positive longterm effects of the program is not overwhelming. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey's Child-Mother file, we examine the impact of the program on a range of chi]d outcomes.We compare non-parametric estimates of program effects with estimates from parametric models that control for selection by including mother fixed effects. This comparison suggests that studies that ignore selection can be substantially misleading; it also suggests that the impact of selection differs considerably across racial and ethnic groups. After controlling for selection, we find positive and persistent effects of participation in Head Start on the test scores of white and Hispanic children. These children are also less likely to have repeated a grade. We find no effects on the test scores or schooling attainment of African-American children. White children who attend Head Start are more likely to receive a measles shot, while African-American enrollees receive measles shots at an earlier age. African-American children who attend Head Start are also taller than their siblings. In a sample of the children's mothers, we find evidence that whites who attended Head Start as children are taller and have higher AFQT scores than their siblings who did not Janet Currie Duncan Thomas NBER Economic Growth Center 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Yale University Cambridge, MA 02138 Box 1987, Yale Station (617) 868-3900 X344 New Haven. CT 06520 and MIT (202) 432-3623 Head Start is a federal matching grant program that aims to improve the learning skills, social skills, and health status of poor children so that they can begin schooling on an equal footing with their more advantaged peers. Federal guidelines require that 90% of the children served be from families with incomes below the federal poverty line.Begun in 1964 as part of the "War on Poverty', Head Start is the element of that program which has enjoyed the greatest public and bi-partisan support. Former President Bush and President Clinton have pledged to increasefederal funding so that all eligible children may be served. Today 622,000 children, roughly 28% of eligible 3 to 5 year olds, are served at a cost of $2.2 billion per year (Stewart, 1992).Both policy makers and the general public appear to believe that the benefits of Head Start are well-known and well-documented.Head Start is thought to have significant immediate effects on IQ which decline over time and become insignificant by the third grade. Head Start is also thought to reduce grade repetition, high school dropout rates, and teenage pregnancies, and to improve childrens medical care and health status (c.f. Childrens Defense Fund, 1992). However, a close reading of the literature shows that the evidence in support of these conclusions is rather limited.To begin with, despite the broad goals of the Head Start McDonald and Monroe (undated), Goodstein, Cawley, and Burrows (1975), Consortium (1983), Copple, CAine, and ...