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Author: Datar, Ashlesha
Resulting in 6 citations.
1. Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
Loughran, David S.
Endowments and Parental Investments in Infancy and Early Childhood
Demography 47,1 (February 2010): 145-162.
Also: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/demography/v047/47.1.datar.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Child Health; Human Capital; Infants; Mothers, Health; Parental Influences; Parents, Behavior; Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Preschool Children; Siblings

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This article tests whether parents reinforce or compensate for child endowments. We estimate how the difference in birth weight across siblings impacts specific parental investments: breast-feeding, well-baby visits, immunizations, and preschool attendance. Our results indicate that normal-birthweight children are 5%–11% more likely to receive early childhood parental investments than their low-birth-weight siblings. Moreover, the presence of additional low-birth-weight siblings in the household increases the likelihood of investments such as well-baby visits and immunizations for normal-birth-weight children. These results suggest that parental investments in early childhood tend to reinforce endowment differences.
Bibliography Citation
Datar, Ashlesha, M. Rebecca Kilburn and David S. Loughran. "Endowments and Parental Investments in Infancy and Early Childhood." Demography 47,1 (February 2010): 145-162.
2. Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
Loughran, David S.
Health Endowments and Parental Investments in Infancy and Early Childhood
Working Paper WR-367, RAND Labor and Population Working Paper Series, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, March 2006.
Also: http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/2006/RAND_WR367.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: RAND
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Birthweight; Breastfeeding; Family Characteristics; Head Start; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Preschool Children; Siblings

This paper tests whether parents reinforce or compensate for child endowments. We employ birth weight as a proxy for endowments and estimate how the difference in birth weight across siblings impacts specific parental investments, including breastfeeding initiation and duration, well-baby visits, immunizations, preschool attendance, and kindergarten entry age. We also examine whether parental investment in a child is impacted by her siblings' endowments. Our results indicate that heavier birth weight children receive higher levels of most parental investment than their lower birth weight siblings suggesting that parental investments in infancy and early childhood reinforce differences in endowments. In one exception, we find weak evidence that lower birth weight children enter kindergarten slightly later than their normal birth weight siblings, which could be interpreted as a compensating parental investment. Presence of a low birth weight sibling in the household increases the likelihood of investments such as well-baby visits and immunizations.

We use data from the NLSY-C, which contains detailed information about the children born to female respondents of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). We first restrict our sample to mothers with at least two children surveyed between 1986-2000 with birth weight information available for at least one child. Next, we only keep children for whom there is information on at least one of the parental investments examined in the paper. This reduces the sample to 10,000 children born to 3,660 mothers.

We exploit four key features of the NLSY-C for the purposes of this paper. First, the NLSY-C collects data on all children born to NLSY79 mothers, which allows us to examine intrafamily resource allocation decisions. Second, the NLSY-C collects data on birth weight for all surveyed children. The third key feature of the NLSY-C is that it collects information on a number of health and educational investments that parents make in their children starting in infancy and early childhood. Finally, the availability of information regarding maternal and family characteristics, and prenatal investments at the time of each sibling's birth is a unique feature of these data and allows us to control for such differences across siblings.

Our analyses consider the following investments:
(1) Initiation and duration (weeks) of breastfeeding
(2) Whether the child was taken for a well-baby visit in the first year after birth
(3) Whether the child received all doses of DPT and oral polio vaccines
(4) Whether the child attended preschool (including Head Start)
(5) Kindergarten entrance age (KEA) in months, and whether the child was held back
from entering kindergarten even after he or she was eligible

Bibliography Citation
Datar, Ashlesha, M. Rebecca Kilburn and David S. Loughran. "Health Endowments and Parental Investments in Infancy and Early Childhood." Working Paper WR-367, RAND Labor and Population Working Paper Series, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, March 2006.
3. Loughran, David S.
Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
Interaction of Birth Weight, Gestation, and Parental Investment in the Production of Cognitive Development
Presented: Boston, MA, Population Association of America Meetings, April 2004
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); School Entry/Readiness; Siblings

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Low birthweight is correlated with a variety of poor health and cognitive outcomes at both younger and older ages. In this paper, we estimate models of children's achievement scores as a function of birth weight using data from the NLSY Child sample. Data on siblings permit us to control for family-level heterogeneity and test how the effect of birth weight on achievement scores varies with age and grade attainment. We also pay careful attention to how parameters estimates vary across different measures of birthweight and gestational age. Additionally, we investigate whether parental investment in the form of delayed kindergarten entrance compensates for the negative effect of low birthweight on subsequent achievement scores.
Bibliography Citation
Loughran, David S., Ashlesha Datar and M. Rebecca Kilburn. "Interaction of Birth Weight, Gestation, and Parental Investment in the Production of Cognitive Development." Presented: Boston, MA, Population Association of America Meetings, April 2004.
4. Loughran, David S.
Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
Interactive Effect of Birth Weight and Common Parental Investment on Child Test Scores
Working PaperWR-404, RAND Labor and Population Working Paper Series, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, July 2006
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: RAND
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Family Models; Family Size; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Maternal Employment; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); School Entry/Readiness; School Progress; Siblings; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT; Variables, Instrumental

The theoretical and empirical literature on intrahousehold resource allocation focuses on whether child-specific parental investments reinforce or compensate for a child's initial endowments. However, many parental investments, like housing and neighborhood quality and family structure, are shared wholly or in part among all children in a household. The empirical results of this paper imply that these common parental investments are more beneficial to relatively poorly endowed siblings, where birth weight proxies for endowments. This is especially true in relatively high-SES families.

Since we cannot comprehensively account for common parental investments with specific variables available in nationally representative data sets, like the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child file (NLSY-C), nor can we directly measure endowments, we employ an indirect approach in this paper to assess whether common parental investment reinforces or compensates for endowments. This approach compares estimates of the impact of birth weight, which we treat as an observed correlate of endowments, on child test scores derived from empirical specifications that employ between-family and within-family variation in our data.

Bibliography Citation
Loughran, David S., Ashlesha Datar and M. Rebecca Kilburn. "Interactive Effect of Birth Weight and Common Parental Investment on Child Test Scores." Working PaperWR-404, RAND Labor and Population Working Paper Series, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, July 2006.
5. Loughran, David S.
Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
Interactive Effect of Birth Weight and Parental Investment on Child Test Scores
Working Paper No. WR-168, RAND, June 2004.
Also: http://www.rand.org/publications/WR/WR168/WR168.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: RAND
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Family Models; Family Size; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Maternal Employment; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); School Progress

This paper explores how observed and unobserved parental investments compensate for low birth weight. Controlling for family fixed effects, which encompass unobserved parental investment, we find birth weight positively correlates with math and reading scores and these estimates are considerably larger in magnitude than estimates derived from models that do not control for family fixed effects. Additionally, we examine how three specific parental investments -- kindergarten entrance age, maternal labor supply, and family size -- interact with birth weight in models of child test scores. Of these investments, only smaller family size conveys particular advantage to low birth weight children.
Bibliography Citation
Loughran, David S., Ashlesha Datar and M. Rebecca Kilburn. "Interactive Effect of Birth Weight and Parental Investment on Child Test Scores." Working Paper No. WR-168, RAND, June 2004.
6. Loughran, David S.
Datar, Ashlesha
Kilburn, M. Rebecca
The Response of Household Parental Investment to Child Endowments
RAND Working Paper Series No. WR-404-1, RAND, April 2008.
Also: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=999821
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: RAND
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Family Models; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Motor and Social Development (MSD); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)

The theoretical and empirical literature on parental investment focuses on whether child-specific parental investments reinforce or compensate for a child's initial endowments. However, many parental investments, such as neighborhood quality and family size and structure, are shared wholly or in part among all children in a household. The empirical results of this paper imply that such household parental investments compensate for low endowments, as proxied by low birth weight.
Bibliography Citation
Loughran, David S., Ashlesha Datar and M. Rebecca Kilburn. "The Response of Household Parental Investment to Child Endowments." RAND Working Paper Series No. WR-404-1, RAND, April 2008.