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

• Ano de defesa: 2018
• Autor(a) principal: Pires, Luciana Neves
• Orientador(a): Pinto, Cristine Campos de Xavier
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Palavras-chave em Português: Ensino infantil; Investimento na primeira infância; Habilidades cognitivas; Habilidades socioemocionais; Função de produção de habilidade
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Preschool; Early childhood investment; Cognitive skills; Socioemotional skills; Skill production function
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/24069

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.