Child cognitive and non-cognitive development: Does money matter?
Paper
Paper/Presentation Title | Child cognitive and non-cognitive development: Does money matter? |
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Presentation Type | Paper |
Authors | Khanam, Rasheda (Author) and Nghiem, Hong Son (Author) |
Journal or Proceedings Title | Proceedings of the 34th Australian Conference of Health Economists (AHES 2012) |
Number of Pages | 26 |
Year | 2012 |
Place of Publication | Sydney, Australia |
Conference/Event | 34th Australian Conference of Health Economists (AHES 2012) |
Event Details | 34th Australian Conference of Health Economists (AHES 2012) Event Date 27 to end of 28 Sep 2012 Event Location Darwin, Australia |
Abstract | This paper investigates the routes through which family income may affect children's cognitive and non-cognitive development by exploiting comprehensive information from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Our paper takes a new approach to combine economists' and psychologists' views in modelling the relationship between household income and child development outcomes. Using a dynamic panel data framework, this research contributes to the literature by examining the impact of contextual factors in child health and development. Our results reveal that when a basic set of covariates is used family income is strongly associated with child cognitive and behavioural outcomes. However, when indicators of parental investment, parental stress, parenting practice and neighborhood characteristics are controlled for, the income coefficients are no longer significant for most children's outcomes. We also find that income has higher effects on children cognitive development than upon their non-cognitive development. Our results suggest that the effect of income can be mediated by the family's ability to invest in materials, services and a home environment, parenting practice and neighbourhood characteristics. We find that parental mental health and parenting practice are particularly important for childrens' behavioural and emotional development. When unobserved heterogeneity is controlled for using a random and fixed effect estimators, we did not find any significant association between family income and cognitive and emotional and behavioural development of children. We also find evidence of the dynamic nature of children's human capital investment that current cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes of a child are significantly related to previous outcomes. |
Keywords | Family income, behavioural development, health inequalities, panel data, Australia |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 380108. Health economics |
Public Notes | Interested person can contact first author:rasheda.khanam@usq.edu.au. |
Byline Affiliations | School of Accounting, Economics and Finance |
University of Queensland | |
Institution of Origin | University of Southern Queensland |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q1v41/child-cognitive-and-non-cognitive-development-does-money-matter
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