Child Development and Parental Investment: Introduction

Abstract

This article introduces the EJ Feature on Child Development by reviewing the literature and placing the contributions of the articles in the Feature in the context of a vibrant literature.

Social Investment and Youth Labor Market Participation

“…Moreover, in line with the analysis of Bruno, Marelli, and Signorelli (2015), our results suggest that youth labor market indicators are less responsive to variation in compensatory spending as the total effects of a shock in these policy variables do not ultimately lead to an increased participation of the youth in the labor market. These results also highlight the importance of explicitly considering the role of intrafamilial transfers in future analysis as social investments may have a differential impact across childhood and early youth through family investments (Gál, Vanhuysse, andVargha 2018, Francesconi andHeckman 2016). At the same time, we need to be cautious as we did not consider any redistributive/differential effect that such policies can have at the individual levels (Bonoli and Liechti 2018;Pavolini and Van Lancker 2018), nor any regional spillover effects that policies can have among regions.…”

Does Quality of Early Childhood Education and Care Affect the Home Learning Environment of Children?

“…In this framework, the dynamic complementarity of skills results from the fact that investments and skills at time t affect the skill level at t+1 and so on. While this technology of skill formation focuses on the multiple distinct developmental periods in childhood and on multiple skills, it also emphasizes multiple forms of investments, including parenting and schooling (e.g., Francesconi and Heckman 2016 and Araujo et al 2016). If parents' compensation behavior dominates, we would expect a negative effect of ECEC quality on the HLE quality.…”

“…This might imply an inefficient allocation of ECEC quality. Inequalities in early live circumstances, which exist from the very beginning, might further increase (for such an argumentation, see, e.g., Francesconi and Heckman 2016).…”

PARENTS KNOW THEM BETTER: THE EFFECT OF OPTIONAL EARLY ENTRY ON PUPILS' SCHOOLING ATTAINMENT

“…Among others, see Sweetland and De Simone (), Jones and Mandeville (), Sharp (), Mayer and Knutson (), Strøm (), Datar (), Elder and Lubotsky (), McEwan and Shapiro (), Crawford, Dearden, and Meghir (), and Robertson (). The state of the art on child development is presented in Francesconi and Heckman ().…”

“…Among others, see Sweetland and De Simone (1987), Jones and Mandeville (1990), Sharp (1995), Mayer and Knutson (1999), Strøm (2004), Datar (2006), Elder and Lubotsky (2009), McEwan and Shapiro (2008), Crawford, Dearden, and Meghir (2010), and Robertson (2011). The state of the art on child development is presented in Francesconi and Heckman (2016). in terms of skills' acquisition and human capital accumulation that may eventually lead to better labor market opportunities. 2 Almost all existing empirical studies point toward the existence of a positive relationship between age at school entry and educational attainment and-despite some recent works that have questioned methodological aspects suggesting more sophisticated approaches-this result appears to be fairly robust.…”