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Author: Masterov, Dimitriy V.
Resulting in 6 citations.
1. Carneiro, Pedro M.
Heckman, James J.
Masterov, Dimitriy V.
Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences in Premarket Factors
NBER Working Paper No. 10068, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2003.
Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w10068.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Bias Decomposition; Children, Academic Development; Educational Aspirations/Expectations; Educational Attainment; Family Influences; Hispanics; Home Environment; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Labor Market Outcomes; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Racial Differences; Skill Formation; Wage Gap

This paper examines minority-white wage gaps. Neal and Johnson (1996) show that controlling for ability measured in the teenage years eliminates young adult wage gaps for all groups except for black males, for whom they eliminate 70% of the gap. Their study has been faulted because minority children and their parents may have pessimistic expectations about receiving fair rewards for their skills and so they may invest less in skill formation. If this is the case, discrimination may still affect wages, albeit indirectly, though it would appear that any racial differences in wages are due to differences in acquired traits. We find that gaps in ability across racial and ethnic groups open up at very early ages, long before child expectations are likely to become established. These gaps widen with age and schooling for Blacks, but not for Hispanics which indicates that poor schools and neighborhoods cannot be the principal factors affecting the slow black test score growth rate. Test scores depend on schooling attained at the time of the test. Adjusting for racial and ethnic differences in schooling attainment at the age the test is taken reduces the power of measured ability to shrink wage gaps for blacks, but not for other minorities. The evidence from expectations data are mixed. Although all groups are quite optimistic about future schooling outcomes, minority parents and children have more pessimistic expectations about child schooling relative to white children and their parents when their children are young. At later ages, expectations are more uniform across racial and ethnic groups. However, we also present some evidence that expectations data are unreliable and ambiguous. We also document the presence of disparities in noncognitive traits across racial and ethnic groups. These characteristics have been shown elsewhere to be important for explaining the labor market outcomes of adults.

This evidence points to the importance of early (preschool) family factors and environments in explaining both cognitive and noncognitive ability differentials by ethnicity and race. Policies that foster both types of ability are far more likely to be effective in promoting racial and ethnic equality for most groups than are additional civil rights and affirmative action policies targeted at the workplace.
Bibliography Citation
Carneiro, Pedro M., James J. Heckman and Dimitriy V. Masterov. "Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences in Premarket Factors." NBER Working Paper No. 10068, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2003.
2. Carneiro, Pedro M.
Heckman, James J.
Masterov, Dimitriy V.
Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences in Premarket Factors
Journal of Law and Economics 48,1 (April 2005): 1-40.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/426878
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Bias Decomposition; Children, Academic Development; Educational Aspirations/Expectations; Educational Attainment; Family Influences; Home Environment; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math)

This paper investigates the relative significance of differences in cognitive skills and discrimination in explaining racial/ethnic wage gaps. We show that cognitive test scores for exams taken prior to entering the labor market are influenced by schooling. Adjusting the scores for racial/ethnic differences in education at the time the test is taken reduces their role in accounting for the wage gaps. We also consider evidence on parental and child expectations about education and on stereotype threat effects. We find both factors to be implausible alternative explanations for the gaps we observe. We argue that policies need to address the sources of early skill gaps and to seek to influence the more malleable behavioral abilities in addition to their cognitive counterparts. Such policies are far more likely to be effective in promoting racial and ethnic equality for most groups than are additional civil rights and affirmative action policies targeted at the workplace.
Bibliography Citation
Carneiro, Pedro M., James J. Heckman and Dimitriy V. Masterov. "Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences in Premarket Factors." Journal of Law and Economics 48,1 (April 2005): 1-40.
3. Heckman, James J.
Masterov, Dimitriy V.
The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children
Working Paper 5, Invest in Kids Working Group, October 2004.
Also: http://www.ced.org/docs/report/report_ivk_heckman_2004.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Committee for Economic Development
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Bias Decomposition; Children, Academic Development; Educational Aspirations/Expectations; Educational Attainment; Family Influences; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Labor Market Outcomes; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math)

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

Introduction
Education, perseverance and motivation are all major factors determining productivity, both in the workplace and beyond it. The family is a major producer of these skills, which are indispensable for successful students and workers. Unfortunately, many families have failed to perform this task well in recent years. This retards the growth in the quality of the labor force. Dysfunctional families are also a major determinant of child participation in crime and other costly pathological behaviors. On productivity grounds alone, it appears to make sound business sense to invest in young children from disadvantaged environments. An accumulating body of evidence suggests that early childhood interventions are much more effective than remedies that attempt to compensate for early neglect later in life. Enriched pre-kindergarten programs available to disadvantaged children on a voluntary basis, coupled with home visitation programs, have a strong track record of promoting achievement for disadvantaged children, improving their labor market outcomes and reducing involvement with crime. Such programs are likely to generate substantial savings to society and to promote higher economic growth by improving the skills of the workforce...This paper presents a case for investing more in young American children who grow up in disadvantaged environments. Figure 1 presents time series of alternative measures of disadvantaged families. The percentage of children born into or living in nontraditional families has increased tremendously in the last 30 years.1,2 The percentage of children living in poverty has fallen recently, as has the percentage of all children born into poor families, though this number is still high, especially among certain subgroups. The percentage of children born into single parent homes is now 25%. These environments place children at risk for failure in social and economic life. Many have commented on this phenomenon, and most analyses have cast the issue of assisting the children of these
Bibliography Citation
Heckman, James J. and Dimitriy V. Masterov. "The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children." Working Paper 5, Invest in Kids Working Group, October 2004.
4. Heckman, James J.
Masterov, Dimitriy V.
The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children
Presented: Chicago, IL, T.W. Schultz Award Lecture at the Allied Social Sciences Association Annual Meeting, January 2007.
Also: http://jenni.uchicago.edu/Invest/FILES/dugger_2004-12-02_dvm.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: American Society for Nutrition (ASN)
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Behavioral Problems; Childbearing, Adolescent; Children, Academic Development; Children, Behavioral Development; Children, Home Environment; Crime; Disadvantaged, Economically; Education; Family Environment; Family Structure; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Human Capital; I.Q.; International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS); Labor Market Demographics; Literacy; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Skill Formation

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

Education, perseverance and motivation are all major factors determining productivity, both in the workplace and beyond it. The family is a major producer of these skills, which are indispensable for successful students and workers. Unfortunately, many families have failed to perform this task well in recent years. This retards the growth in the quality of the labor force. Dysfunctional families are also a major determinant of child participation in crime and other costly pathological behaviors. On productivity grounds alone, it appears to make sound business sense to invest in young children from disadvantaged environments. An accumulating body of evidence suggests that early childhood interventions are much more effective than remedies that attempt to compensate for early neglect later in life. Enriched pre-kindergarten programs available to disadvantaged children on a voluntary basis, coupled with home visitation programs, have a strong track record of promoting achievement for disadvantaged children, improving their labor market outcomes and reducing involvement with crime. Such programs are likely to generate substantial savings to society and to promote higher economic growth by improving the skills of the workforce.
Bibliography Citation
Heckman, James J. and Dimitriy V. Masterov. "The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children." Presented: Chicago, IL, T.W. Schultz Award Lecture at the Allied Social Sciences Association Annual Meeting, January 2007.
5. Heckman, James J.
Masterov, Dimitriy V.
The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children
Review of Agricultural Economics 29,3 (Fall 2007): 446-493.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4624854
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing, Inc. => Wiley Online
Keyword(s): Childbearing; Children, Academic Development; Children, Behavioral Development; Children, Home Environment; Crime; Family Structure; International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS); Skill Formation

This lecture was given as the T.W. Schultz Award Lecture at the Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting, Chicago, January 5–7, 2007. This article was not subject to the journal's standard refereeing process. Copyright 2007 American Agricultural Economics Association.

[From pdf at: http://jenni.uchicago.edu/Invest/FILES/dugger_2004-12-02_dvm.pdf.] This paper presents a productivity argument for investing in disadvantaged young children. For such investment, there is no equity-efficiency tradeoff. The web appendix for this paper can be downloaded from http://jenni.uchicago.edu/Invest/.

Bibliography Citation
Heckman, James J. and Dimitriy V. Masterov. "The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children." Review of Agricultural Economics 29,3 (Fall 2007): 446-493.
6. Heckman, James J.
Masterov, Dimitriy V.
The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children
NBER Working Paper No. 13016, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2007.
Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13016
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Childbearing; Children, Academic Development; Children, Behavioral Development; Crime; Education; Family Structure; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Skill Formation

This paper presents a productivity argument for investing in disadvantaged young children. For such investment, there is no equity-efficiency tradeoff. [It] graphs time series of alternative measures of the percentage of children in disadvantaged families. The percentage of children born into, or living in, nontraditional families has increased greatly in the last 30 years.1,2 Approximately 25% of children are now born into single parent homes. While the percentages of children living in poverty and born into poor families have fallen recently, they are still high, especially among certain subgroups.

Adverse environments place children at risk for social and economic failure. The accident of birth plays a powerful role in determining adult success.3 Many have commented on this phenomenon, and most analyses have cast the issue of assisting children from disadvantaged families as a question of fairness or social justice.

This paper makes a different argument.

Bibliography Citation
Heckman, James J. and Dimitriy V. Masterov. "The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children." NBER Working Paper No. 13016, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2007.