Early Childhood Human Capital

This thesis consists of three essays examining the early childhood human capital. The first chapter sets out to identify the effect of sibling birth spacing on children's academic achievement and engagement in risky behaviours by using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79). Some unobservable variables in the family such as parental personality or wealth can affect both spacing and a child's performance and may cause an endogeneity problem. To overcome this, I use family fixed effect to control for unobservable family-specific characteristics. The second chapter investigates the influence of the ``No Child Left Behind'' (NCLB) act, based not only on its own target but also on the unintended consequences of this act. More specifically, I evaluate the effect of this act on mathematics and reading using a new approach and investigate whether this act did, in fact, reduce the educational gap between different subgroups. Furthermore, I consider two aspects as unintended consequences of this act: first, the impact of the NCLB act on students' test scores in untargeted skills such as non-cognitive skills and science; and second, the effect on the distribution of students' test scores. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey-Kindergarten data set, I implement the difference-in-difference methodology between public schools receiving Title-I federal funding versus public schools not receiving federal funding because only Title-I public schools were penalized by this act. Moreover, since low and high performing students might be affected differently, I use the quantile regression to evaluate the distributional effect of this act. The third chapter explores the mechanisms behind the NCLB act. I consider two channels of change: improving teaching productivity and reallocating time at the expense of non-targeted courses. To investigate these two channels, I develop a model of a school optimization behavior and a production function of skill formation. The estimated parameters of the model, together with data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten, are used to conduct a counter-factual experiment to find time allocation in targeted and non-targeted skills if this act had not been implemented.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Economics

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Graduate Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Zahedi, Razieh

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Choo, Eugene

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Tanaka, Atsuko
• Eaton, Curtis

• Education
• Education--Early Childhood
• Economics

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/25766

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:11023/2651