Collaborative Research: Estimating the Technology of Skill Formation and Maternal Well-Being

合作研究：评估技能形成技术和孕产妇福祉

• 批准号: 1725270
• 负责人: Joshua Kinsler
• 金额: $ 9.26万
• 依托单位: University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-08-01 至 2021-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1725270&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Estimating; Technology; Skill

This research project will study the effects of parental skills and investment on children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills development thus impacting the long term social and economic development of these children in later life. Previous studies of these effects rely on mothers' assessments of child non-cognitive skills---an assessment that may be biased---and do not account for maternal well-being on the dynamics of the child's cognitive and non-cognitive skill development. These omissions may affect the results of the effects of parental skills and investments on child development. The proposed research will use the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) to study the effects of parental skills and investment on children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills. In addition to assessment of non-cognitive skills by parents, the data set also contain assessment of non-cognitive skills by teachers and interviewers as well as the physical, mental, and emotional health of the mother. This will allow the researchers to study the reciprocal link from child to parent may generate important feedback effects on the child's development; therefore, limiting the biases that may arise from the omissions discussed above. The results of this research project will provide guidance to practitioners, educators and policymakers as they develop policies to improve to improve cognitive and non-cognitive skills of children. Helping to understand how to improve cognitive and non-cognitive skills among children will result in a stronger work force, thus improving the long-run performance of the U.S. economy. Previous studies of the effects of parental skills and investment on children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills development suffer from two potential sources of bias: they rely on the mother's, possibly biased, assessment of the child's non-cognitive skills and do not allow for possible feedback effect the child's cognitive and non-cognitive development may have on the mother's skills. To address these issues, the PIs will use two features of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). First, the MCS dataset collects measures of child non-cognitive skills from mothers, and from interviewers and teachers. Second, the MCS interviews mothers on their mental health and life satisfaction during each wave of the survey. Using this data, the PIs will estimate a technology of skill formation characterized by dynamic, nonlinear production functions where both inputs and outputs are unobserved. Key inputs include contemporaneous child skills, parental skills, and parental investment, while the next period's cognitive and non-cognitive skills for both the child and the mother are the relevant outputs. To achieve identification, the researchers rely on the availability of noisy measures of child skills, parental skills and parental investment each period, following the methodology of Cunha, Heckman and Schennach (2010). The identification of the contamination of mother-assessed child non-cognitive skills relies on allowing the observed measures of non-cognitive skills, as reported by teachers and interviewers, to be a function of both maternal skills and child skills. The results of this research project will contribute to a better understanding of the link between parental skills and investment and child outcomes and will provide guidance to practitioners, educators and policymakers as they develop policies to improve cognitive and non-cognitive skill development of children.

本研究项目将研究父母技能和投资对儿童认知和非认知技能发展的影响，从而影响这些儿童在以后的生活中长期的社会和经济发展。先前对这些影响的研究依赖于母亲对儿童非认知技能的评估——这种评估可能有偏见——并且没有考虑到母亲对儿童认知和非认知技能发展动态的幸福感。这些遗漏可能会影响父母技能和投资对儿童发展的影响。拟议的研究将使用千年队列研究（MCS）来研究父母技能和投资对儿童认知和非认知技能的影响。除了父母对非认知技能的评估外，该数据集还包括教师和采访者对非认知技能的评估，以及母亲的身体、心理和情感健康。这将使研究人员能够研究从孩子到父母之间的互惠关系可能对孩子的发展产生重要的反馈效应；因此，限制可能由上述遗漏引起的偏差。这项研究项目的结果将为从业人员、教育工作者和政策制定者制定政策以提高儿童的认知和非认知技能提供指导。帮助了解如何提高儿童的认知和非认知技能将导致更强大的劳动力，从而改善美国经济的长期表现。先前关于父母技能和投资对儿童认知和非认知技能发展的影响的研究存在两个潜在的偏见来源：它们依赖于母亲对儿童非认知技能的评估，可能存在偏见，并且没有考虑到儿童的认知和非认知发展可能对母亲的技能产生的反馈效应。为了解决这些问题，pi将使用千年队列研究（MCS）的两个特征。首先，MCS数据集从母亲、采访者和老师那里收集儿童非认知技能的测量数据。其次，MCS在每一波调查中对母亲的心理健康和生活满意度进行了访谈。利用这些数据，pi将评估一种以动态、非线性生产函数为特征的技能形成技术，其中输入和输出都是不可观察的。关键的输入包括同时期的儿童技能、父母技能和父母投资，而下一个时期的儿童和母亲的认知和非认知技能是相关的输出。为了实现识别，研究人员根据Cunha、Heckman和Schennach（2010）的方法，依赖于每个时期对儿童技能、父母技能和父母投资的嘈杂测量的可用性。要确定母亲评估的儿童非认知技能的污染程度，需要允许教师和采访者报告的观察到的非认知技能测量结果是母亲技能和儿童技能的作用。该研究项目的结果将有助于更好地了解父母技能与投资和儿童成果之间的联系，并将为制定改善儿童认知和非认知技能发展政策的从业人员、教育工作者和政策制定者提供指导。