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Title: Formulating, Identifying and Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Cunha, Flavio
Heckman, James J.
Formulating, Identifying and Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation
Working Paper, University of Chicago, April 30, 2006.
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, University of Chicago
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Child Development; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Human Capital; I.Q.; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Life Cycle Research; Parental Influences; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Skill Formation; Skills

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

This paper formulates and estimates models of the evolution of cognitive and noncognitive skills over the life cycle of children and explores the role of family environments in shaping these skills at different stages of the life cycle. Central to this analysis is the identification of the technology of human skill formation. We estimate a dynamic factor model to solve the problem of endogeneity of inputs and multiplicity of inputs relative to instruments. We identify the scale of the factors by estimating their effects on adult earnings. In this fashion we avoid reliance on test scores and changes in test scores that have no natural metric. Parental investments are more effective in raising noncognitive skills. Noncognitive skills promote the formation of cognitive skills (but not vice versa). Parental inputs have different effects at different stages of the child's life cycle with cognitive skills affected more at early ages and noncognitive skills affected more at later ages.
Bibliography Citation
Cunha, Flavio and James J. Heckman. "Formulating, Identifying and Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation." Working Paper, University of Chicago, April 30, 2006..