Health at Birth, Parental Investments and Academic Outcomes

In this presentation I explore the relationship between health at birth and academic outcomes using administrative panel data from Chile. Twins fixed effects models estimate a persistent effect of birth weight on academic achievement while OLS and siblings fixed effects models find this relationship to decline over time. We make sense of these findings in the context of a model of human capital accumulation where parental investments respond to initial endowments. Using detailed data on parental investments, we find that investments are compensatory with regard to initial health, but that within twins, parents do not invest differentially. These findings suggest that initial health shocks significantly affect academic outcomes and that parental investments are a potential channel via which the negative impacts of health shocks can be mitigated over the long run. Prashant Bharadwaj is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. His research interests are in development and labor economics, focusing on the interactions between early childhood health, gender, and education. A distinctive feature of his work is a focus on external validity, studying behaviors and policies in different contexts to allow for well-informed policy decisions. His research spans child development in a broad range of economies – from developing countries like India, Nepal and Zimbabwe, to middle income countries like Chile, and to developed countries like Norway and the US. Research affiliations include BREAD (Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development), CEGA (Center for Effective Global Action), CERP (Center for Economic Research in Pakistan), and the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research). Dr. Bharadwaj received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2009 and his A.B. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 2004. Research Statement