Working Paper: NBER ID: w28283
Authors: John A. List; Fatemeh Momeni; Yves Zenou
Abstract: The behavioral revolution within economics has been largely driven by psychological insights, with the sister sciences playing a lesser role. This study leverages insights from sociology to explore the role of neighborhoods on human capital formation at an early age. We do so by estimating the spillover effects from a large-scale early childhood intervention on the educational attainment of over 2,000 disadvantaged children in the United States. We document large spillover effects on both treatment and control children who live near treated children. Interestingly, the spillover effects are localized, decreasing with the spatial distance to treated neighbors. Perhaps our most novel insight is the underlying mechanisms at work: the spillover effect on non-cognitive scores operate through the child's social network while parental investment is an important channel through which cognitive spillover effects operate. Overall, our results reveal the importance of public programs and neighborhoods on human capital formation at an early age, highlighting that human capital accumulation is fundamentally a social activity.
Keywords: Human Capital; Neighborhood Effects; Early Childhood Education; Field Experiment; Social Interactions
JEL Codes: C93; I21; I24; I26; I28; R1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Treated neighbors (F55) | Child's cognitive score (D91) |
| Treated neighbors (F55) | Child's noncognitive score (I21) |
| Treated neighbors (F55) | Child's educational attainment (I21) |
| Racial heterogeneity (J15) | Noncognitive spillover effects (D91) |
| Distance from treated neighbors (C21) | Spillover effects (F69) |
| CHECC intervention (I24) | Child's cognitive score (D91) |
| CHECC intervention (I24) | Child's noncognitive score (I21) |
| Child's cognitive score (D91) | Child's noncognitive score (I21) |