Comparing the reliability and predictive power of child, teacher, and guardian reports of noncognitive skills.

Children's noncognitive or socioemotional skills (e.g., persistence and self-control) are typically measured using surveys in which either children rate their own skills or adults rate the skills of children. For many purposes-including program evaluation and monitoring school systems-ratings are often collected from multiple perspectives about a single child (e.g., from both the child and an adult). Collecting data from multiple perspectives is costly, and there is limited evidence on the benefits of this approach. Using a longitudinal survey, this study compares children's noncognitive skills as reported by themselves, their guardians, and their teachers. Although reports from all three types of respondents are correlated with each other, teacher reports have the highest internal consistency and are the most predictive of children's later cognitive outcomes and behavior in school. The teacher reports add predictive power beyond baseline measures of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) for most outcomes in schools. Measures collected from children and guardians add minimal predictive power beyond the teacher reports.

Sensitivity of self-reported noncognitive skills to survey administration conditions.

Noncognitive skills (e.g., persistence and self-control) are typically measured using self-reported questionnaires in which respondents rate their own skills. In many applications-including program evaluation and school accountability systems-such reports are assumed to measure only the skill of interest. However, self-reports might also capture other dimensions aside from the skill, such as aspects of a respondent's situation, which could include incentives and the conditions in which they complete the questionnaire. To explore this possibility, this study conducted 2 experiments to estimate the extent to which survey administration conditions can affect student responses on noncognitive skill questionnaires. The first experiment tested whether providing information about the importance of noncognitive skills to students directly affects their responses, and the second experiment tested whether incentives tied to performance on another task indirectly affect responses. Both experiments suggest that self-reports of noncognitive skills are sensitive to survey conditions. The effects of the conditions are relatively large compared with those found in the program evaluation literature, ranging from 0.05 to 0.11 SDs. These findings suggest that the effects of interventions or other social policies on self-reported noncognitive skills should be interpreted with caution.

Cognitive, psychosocial, and behaviour gains at age 31 years from the Jamaica early childhood stimulation trial.

BACKGROUND: There is little evidence on adult benefits from early childhood interventions in low and middle-income countries. We assessed adult cognition, psychosocial skills and behaviour from a stimulation trial conducted in Jamaica. METHODS: Children with stunted growth (height-for age <-2SD of references) aged 9-24 months were enrolled in a two-year randomised-controlled trial of nutritional supplementation and/or stimulation. At mean age 31.79 (SD 0.40) years, 95 of 127 participants (74.8%; 53.7% male) were assessed. Children without stunted growth were also followed as a comparison group (64 of 84 participants, 76.2%). Measurements included IQ, executive function, mental health, psychosocial skills, personality traits and risk behaviours. A block permutation test, valid for small sample sizes, was used. Analyses accounted for the randomisation protocol, multiple hypothesis testing and attrition. RESULTS: Treatment group participants (stimulation intervention with or without supplementation, n = 48) had significantly greater IQ (Hedges g effect size 0. 57; 95%CI 0.20, 0.95) and cognitive flexibility (0.61; 0.25, 0.98) compared with no-treatment (no-intervention and supplementation only, n = 47). They also had reduced depressive symptoms (0.61; 0.28, 1.00), increased grit (0.53; 0.16, 0.92) and conscientiousness (0.66; 0.31, 1.07), lower substance use (rank mean score, 0.45; 0.08, 0.81) and risk taking related to health and work (0.64; 0.27, 1.00). There were 18 significant outcomes of 33 assessed. Comparison participants had higher IQ than no-treatment (1.17; 0.81, 1.54) and treatment groups (0.62; 0.18, 1.07); and better executive function, lower social inhibition and risk taking than the no-treatment group. CONCLUSIONS: The wide-ranging benefits at 31 years from the stimulation intervention supports investment in larger scale programmes to promote early childhood development in disadvantaged children. The lower IQ in the treatment group compared with comparison participants, emphasises the need for continued efforts to prevent early childhood growth retardation.

Early childhood education and life-cycle health.

This study forecasts the life-cycle treatment effects on health of a high-quality early childhood program. Our predictions combine microsimulation using nonexperimental data with experimental data from a midlife long-term follow-up. The follow-up incorporated a full epidemiological exam. The program mainly benefits males and significantly reduces the prevalence of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and mortality across the life-cycle. For men, we estimate an average reduction of 3.8 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). The reduction in DALYs is relatively small for women. The gain in quality-adjusted life years is almost enough to offset all of the costs associated with program implementation for males and half of program costs for women.

What grades and achievement tests measure.

Intelligence quotient (IQ), grades, and scores on achievement tests are widely used as measures of cognition, but the correlations among them are far from perfect. This paper uses a variety of datasets to show that personality and IQ predict grades and scores on achievement tests. Personality is relatively more important in predicting grades than scores on achievement tests. IQ is relatively more important in predicting scores on achievement tests. Personality is generally more predictive than IQ on a variety of important life outcomes. Both grades and achievement tests are substantially better predictors of important life outcomes than IQ. The reason is that both capture personality traits that have independent predictive power beyond that of IQ.

Early childhood education and crime.

This article presents new evidence on the crime-reducing impacts of a high-quality, intensive early childhood program with long-term follow-up, evaluated by a randomized controlled trial. Proportionately, more women than men decrease their criminal activity after participating in the program. This gender difference arises because of the worse home environments for girls, with corresponding greater scope for improvement by the program. For both genders, treatment effects are larger for the least-advantaged children, as measured by their mother's education at baseline. The dollar value of the social cost of criminal activity averted is higher for men because they commit more costly violent crimes.

Gender Differences in the Benefits of an Influential Early Childhood Program.

This paper studies the life-cycle impacts of a widely-emulated high-quality, intensive early childhood program with long-term follow up. The program starts early in life (at 8 weeks of age) and is evaluated by an RCT. There are multiple treatment effects which we summarize through interpretable aggregates. Girls have a greater number of statistically significant treatment effects than boys and effect sizes for them are generally bigger. The source of this difference is worse home environments for girls with greater scope for improvement by the program. Fathers of sons support their families more than fathers of daughters.

Evaluation of the Reggio Approach to Early Education.

We evaluate the Reggio Approach using non-experimental data on individuals from the cities of Reggio Emilia, Parma and Padova belonging to one of five age cohorts: ages 50, 40, 30, 18, and 6 as of 2012. The treated were exposed to municipally offered infant-toddler (ages 0-3) and preschool (ages 3-6) programs. The control group either did not receive formal childcare or were exposed to programs offered by the state or religious systems. We exploit the city-cohort structure of the data to estimate treatment effects using three strategies: difference-in-differences, matching, and matched-difference-in-differences. Most positive and significant effects are generated from comparisons of the treated with individuals who did not receive formal childcare. Relative to not receiving formal care, the Reggio Approach significantly boosts outcomes related to employment, socio-emotional skills, high school graduation, election participation, and obesity. Comparisons with individuals exposed to alternative forms of childcare do not yield strong patterns of positive and significant effects. This suggests that differences between the Reggio Approach and other alternatives are not sufficiently large to result in significant differences in outcomes. This interpretation is supported by our survey, which documents increasing similarities in the administrative and pedagogical practices of childcare systems in the three cities over time.

Abducting Economics.

Abduction is the process of generating and choosing models, hypotheses and data analyzed in response to surprising findings. All good empirical economists abduct. Explanations usually evolve as studies evolve. The abductive approach challenges economists to step outside the framework of received notions about the "identification problem" that rigidly separates the act of model and hypothesis creation from the act of inference from data. It asks the analyst to engage models and data in an iterative dynamic process, using multiple models and sources of data in a back and forth where both models and data are augmented as learning evolves.

Intergenerational Long-Term Effects of Preschool - Structural Estimates from a Discrete Dynamic Programming Model.

This paper formulates a structural dynamic programming model of preschool investment choices of altruistic parents and then empirically estimates the structural parameters of the model using the NLSY79 data. The paper finds that preschool investment significantly boosts cognitive and non-cognitive skills, which enhance earnings and school outcomes. It also finds that a standard Mincer earnings function, by omitting measures of non-cognitive skills on the right-hand side, overestimates the rate of return to schooling. From the estimated equilibrium Markov process, the paper studies the nature of within generation earnings distribution, intergenerational earnings mobility, and schooling mobility. The paper finds that a tax-financed free preschool program for the children of poor socioeconomic status generates positive net gains to the society in terms of average earnings, higher intergenerational earnings mobility, and schooling mobility.

Dynamic Treatment Effects.

This paper develops robust models for estimating and interpreting treatment effects arising from both ordered and unordered multistage decision problems. Identification is secured through instrumental variables and/or conditional independence (matching) assumptions. We decompose treatment effects into direct effects and continuation values associated with moving to the next stage of a decision problem. Using our framework, we decompose the IV estimator, showing that IV generally does not estimate economically interpretable or policy relevant parameters in prototypical dynamic discrete choice models, unless policy variables are instruments. Continuation values are an empirically important component of estimated total treatment effects of education. We use our analysis to estimate the components of what LATE estimates in a dynamic discrete choice model.

Gary Becker: Model Economic Scientist.

This paper presents Gary Becker's approach to conducting creative, empirically fruitful economic research. It describes the traits and methodology that made him such a productive and influential scholar.

Transcriptional modulation of the developing immune system by early life social adversity.

To identify molecular mechanisms by which early life social conditions might influence adult risk of disease in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), we analyze changes in basal leukocyte gene expression profiles in 4-mo-old animals reared under adverse social conditions. Compared with the basal condition of maternal rearing (MR), leukocytes from peer-reared (PR) animals and PR animals provided with an inanimate surrogate mother (surrogate/peer reared, SPR) show enhanced expression of genes involved in inflammation, cytokine signaling, and T-lymphocyte activation, and suppression of genes involved in several innate antimicrobial defenses including type I interferon (IFN) antiviral responses. Promoter-based bioinformatic analyses implicate increased activity of CREB and NF-κB transcription factors and decreased activity of IFN response factors (IRFs) in structuring the observed differences in gene expression. Transcript origin analyses identify monocytes and CD4(+) T lymphocytes as primary cellular mediators of transcriptional up-regulation and B lymphocytes as major sources of down-regulated genes. These findings show that adverse social conditions can become embedded within the basal transcriptome of primate immune cells within the first 4 mo of life, and they implicate sympathetic nervous system-linked transcription control pathways as candidate mediators of those effects and potential targets for health-protective intervention.

Primate evidence on the late health effects of early-life adversity.

This paper exploits a unique ongoing experiment to analyze the effects of early rearing conditions on physical and mental health in a sample of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). We analyze the health records of 231 monkeys that were randomly allocated at birth across three rearing conditions: mother rearing, peer rearing, and surrogate peer rearing. We show that the lack of a secure attachment relationship in the early years engendered by adverse rearing conditions has detrimental long-term effects on health that are not compensated for by a normal social environment later in life.

Bayesian Exploratory Factor Analysis.

This paper develops and applies a Bayesian approach to Exploratory Factor Analysis that improves on ad hoc classical approaches. Our framework relies on dedicated factor models and simultaneously determines the number of factors, the allocation of each measurement to a unique factor, and the corresponding factor loadings. Classical identification criteria are applied and integrated into our Bayesian procedure to generate models that are stable and clearly interpretable. A Monte Carlo study confirms the validity of the approach. The method is used to produce interpretable low dimensional aggregates from a high dimensional set of psychological measurements.

Older Siblings' Contributions to Young Child's Cognitive Skills.

This work finds that older siblings as well as early parenting influence young children's cognitive skills directly or indirectly, for example, Mathematics, and English. Our findings challenge a pervasive view in the economical literatures that early parenting play a dominant role in explaining child development. In economics, early environmental conditions are important to demonstrate the evolution of adolescent and adult cognitive skills (Knudsen, Heckman, Cameron, and Shonkoff, 2006; Cunha and Heckman, 2007), and it establishes causal impacts of early parental inputs and other environmental factors on cognitive and non-cognitive skills (Heckman, Stixrud, and Urzua, 2006; Borghans, Duckworth, Heckman, and Weel, 2006; Cunha, Heckman, and Schennach, 2010). Early parenting as well as older siblings should explain a diverse array of academic and social outcomes, for example, Mathematics, English, maritage and pregnancy. In fact, older siblings' characteristics are as important, if not more important, than parenting for child development. Our analysis addresses the problems of measurement error, imperfect proxies, and reverse causality that plague conventional approach in psychology. We find that older brother contributes much more than older sister to child's mathematical achievement, while older sister contributes much more to child's english achievement. Our evidence is consistent with psychology literature, for example, Hetherington (1988), Jenkins (1992), Zukow-Goldring (1995), Marshall, Garcia-Coll, Marx, McCartney, Keffe, and Rub (1997), Maynard (2002), and Brody Ge, Kim, Murry, Simons, Gibbons, Gerrard, and Conger (2003) for siblings' direct contributions to child development, Bronfenbrenner (1997), East (1998), Whiteman and Buchanan (2002), and Brody, Ge, Kim, Murry, Simons, Gibbons, Gerrard, and Conger (2003) for siblings's indirect contributions, and Reiss, Neiderhiser, Hetherington, and Plomin (2000), Feinberg and Hetherington (2001), Kowal, Kramer, Krull, and Crick (2002) for parental differential treatment.

Parenting Promotes Social Mobility Within and Across Generations.

This paper compares early childhood enrichment programs that promote social mobility for disadvantaged children within and across generations. Instead of conducting a standard meta-analysis, we present a harmonized primary data analysis of programs that shape current policy. Our analysis is a template for rigorous syntheses and comparisons across programs. We analyze new long-run life-cycle data collected for iconic programs when participants are middle-aged and their children are in their twenties. The iconic programs are omnibus in nature and offer many services to children and their parents. We compare them with relatively low-cost more focused home-visiting programs. Successful interventions target both children and their caregivers. They engage caregivers and improve the home lives of children. They permanently boost cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Participants in programs that enrich home environments grow up with better skills, jobs, earnings, marital stability, and health, as well as reduced participation in crime. Long-run monetized gains are substantially greater than program costs for the iconic programs. We investigate the mechanisms promoting successful family lives for participants and report intergenerational effects on their children. A study of focused home-visiting programs that target parents enables us to isolate a crucial component of successful programs: they activate and promote parenting skills of child caregivers. The home-visiting programs we analyze produce outcomes comparable to those of the iconic omnibus programs. National implementation of the programs with long-run follow up that we analyze would substantially shrink the overall US Black-White earnings gap.

The Lasting Effects of Early-Childhood Education on Promoting the Skills and Social Mobility of Disadvantaged African Americans and Their Children.

This paper demonstrates the long-term intragenerational and intergenerational benefits of the HighScope Perry Preschool Project, which targeted disadvantaged African-American children. We use newly collected data on the original participants through late middle age and on their children into their mid-twenties. We document long-lasting improvements in the original participants' skills, marriage stability, earnings, criminal behavior, and health. Beneficial program impacts through the childrearing years translate into better family environments for their children leading to intergenerational gains. Children of the original participants have higher levels of education and employment, lower levels of criminal activity, and better health than children of the controls.

Comparing China REACH and the Jamaica Home Visiting Program.

OBJECTIVES: Delayed child skill development is a common phenomenon in low- and middle-income countries. Effective and low-cost strategies suitable for application to less-developed countries are needed. We summarize empirical findings from recent papers that study a replication of the Jamaica Reach Up and Learn home visiting program in China, China REACH, and compare child skill growth profiles in the China Reach Up and Jamaica interventions. METHODS: Different interventions often use different measures for assessing early childhood skill development. To estimate the growth of underlying skills across programs, we address the challenge that different programs use different assessments. We use a modified version of the Rasch model to anchor scores on common items to estimate skill development. RESULTS: Language skill growth curves are comparable for both interventions. This pattern is consistent for the treatment and control groups across the interventions. Skill growth curves are not statistically significantly different between China REACH and Jamaican interventions. We find evidence of the importance of early investment. CONCLUSIONS: The China REACH intervention significantly improves the development of multiple skills. At the same ages, treatment effect sizes and skill growth curves are comparable across the Jamaica and China REACH interventions, despite differences in scale and cultural settings. The scale of the program is much greater in China than in Jamaica, showing that the Jamaican curriculum can be effectively expanded to larger populations. Annual costs per child are roughly $500 (2015 US dollars).

Hard evidence on soft skills.

This paper summarizes recent evidence on what achievement tests measure; how achievement tests relate to other measures of "cognitive ability" like IQ and grades; the important skills that achievement tests miss or mismeasure, and how much these skills matter in life. Achievement tests miss, or perhaps more accurately, do not adequately capture, soft skills-personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many other domains. The larger message of this paper is that soft skills predict success in life, that they causally produce that success, and that programs that enhance soft skills have an important place in an effective portfolio of public policies.