The Roles of Birth Inputs and Outputs in Predicting Health, Behavior, and Test Scores in Early Childhood

Abstract

The goal of this study is to address directly the predictive value of birth inputs and outputs, particularly birth weight, for measures of early childhood development in a simultaneous equations modeling framework. Strikingly, birth outputs have virtually no structural/casual effects on early childhood developmental outcomes, and only maternal smoking and drinking during pregnancy have some effects on child height. Not surprisingly, family child-rearing environment has sizeable negative and positive effects on a behavioral problems index and a math/reading test score, respectively, and a mildly surprising negative effect on child height. Despite little evidence of a structural/causal effect of birth weight on early childhood developmental outcomes, our results demonstrate that birth weight nonetheless has strong predictive effects on early childhood outcomes. Furthermore, these effects are largely invariant to whether family child-rearing environment is taken into account. Family child-rearing environment has both structural and predictive effects on early childhood outcomes, but they are largely orthogonal and in addition to the effects of birth weight.

Keywords: early childhood development, birth weight, maternal behavior during pregnancy, endogeneity, NLSY, Bayesian

JEL Classification: C11, C34, I12, J13