Parental Beliefs and Parental Investment: Evidence from Colombia

In measuring parental investment, the standard practice in economics is to estimate models where parents have background knowledge in skill formation, child development or human capital development. However, because these models assume parents “know” the technology of skill formation, these models are ill-suited to understanding the importance of parental beliefs regarding the technology of skill formation in determining parental investments in children.

One possibility to study parental behavior, without assuming that parents have expertise in child development or human capital formation, is to elicit beliefs about skill formation from the parents themselves. In particular, researchers can elicit beliefs about the usefulness of parental stimulation and investment and how these inputs interact with skill formation in child development.

In a forthcoming study, Orazio Attanasio, Cowles Professor of Economics at Yale University, and coauthors study the importance of maternal subjective beliefs about skill formation in determining parental investments in child development. They describe a trifold framework used to elicit and evaluate maternal subjective beliefs, using data collected as part of a parenting stimulation program in Colombia, whose target population was low-income households with children aged 12-24 months. In this program, home visitors paid weekly visits to randomly chosen households to improve mother-child interactions and other maternal behaviors that foster the development of children’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills.

Their findings reveal that most mothers believe that the technology of skill formation follows a Cobb-Douglas parameterization, meaning the more inputs that parents employ, the greater the returns in technology of skill formation and child development. However, the authors also found significant diversity in the coefficients of investments across mothers, and that the program did not affect maternal subjective beliefs.

On Wednesday, May 8, 2024, 12:15-1:45 PM EDT, join Orazio Attanasio for a hybrid research seminar on the importance of maternal subjective beliefs on influencing parental investments in child development.

This seminar is part of the Spring 2024 Human Capital Initiative Research Seminar Series. Lunch will be provided at the event.

Register to attend online: https://gdpcenter.org/HCI-Zoom-Spring-2024

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