Early investments in children are made on the premise that the prenatal period through early childhood resent unique opportunities to produce healthy children and that child health is itself an investment in a child's entire future. This study will provide a fuller understanding of the roles the family plays in the determination of children's early health outcomes and how these early outcomes influence later outcomes such as cognitive development, education, adult health and adult socio-economic success. Two unique features of this study are that it focuses on the development of the child throughout the live cycle from birth outcomes to success in adult life and that it controls for earlier investments in human capital when examining later outcomes. The study uses two data sets, the National Survey of Longitudinal Youth (NLSY) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), to capture the full range of lifetime outcomes for extended families. The study also provides a new econometric approach to modeling these interrelated behaviors for multiple family members, which reveals the nature of the family links as well as the behavioral relationships of primary interest-the determinants of child quality. Specifically, the study will consider a wide range of child outcomes including: (1) infant health-birth weight and prematurity; (2) childhood outcomes-child mortality, weight for height, and cognitive measures; and (3) adult outcomes-education, health, occupational status, and earnings. These outcomes represent the development of the child's """"""""quality"""""""" over the life cycle and are the result of parental decisions concerning resource allocation and investments in children, the stock of family resources, and genetic endowments.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
7R01HD037145-04
Application #
6500949
Study Section
Social Sciences and Population Study Section (SSP)
Program Officer
Evans, V Jeffery
Project Start
1998-12-04
Project End
2003-11-30
Budget Start
2001-05-01
Budget End
2001-11-30
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2001
Total Cost
$226,169
Indirect Cost
Name
Rand Corporation
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Santa Monica
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
90401
Datar, Ashlesha; Kilburn, M Rebecca; Loughran, David S (2010) Endowments and parental investments in infancy and early childhood. Demography 47:145-62