HUMAN CAPITAL ACCUMULATION AND INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY

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This study is concerned with intergenerational mobility in health and human capital outcomes in developing economies. Using data from Brazil, Bolivia, and Colombia, we will measure the effects of parental and community characteristics on a series of indicators of children's well-being: child height and weight (conditional on height) and the children's subsequent human capital as adults, proxied by labor market earnings. For these outcomes, we will estimate returns to education, paying particular attention to the separate contribution of family background which will be measured with parental education and stature. The way community services and infrastructure affect human capital accumulation, especially child height and weight, will also be studied. We will examine both independent effects and the interaction between the availability of better community health, education, and water infrastructure, and parental and household characteristics. Results will be compared within and across the three countries by cohort and, for Brazil, across time. Household level data will be drawn from two very large Brazilian surveys, ENDEF and the 1982 PNAD, and from the World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Surveys in Bolivia and Colombia. These household surveys, which are unusually comprehensive, will be matched with community data on service availability to form a very rich database with which we will identify the determinants of the indicators of child well-being.