American Economic Review Vol. 100 No. 2 2010
Family Health, Children's Own Health, and Test Score Gaps
Abstract
Gaps in educational performance between whites and racial minorities are not present at early ages but do emerge early in the schooling years and increase over time (Roland Fryer and Steve Levitt 2006, forthcoming). James Heckman (2007) assembles evidence from both the bio logical and social sciences which highlights the dynamic complementarity of the learning pro cess?the notion that early learning is vital for learning later on. A recent literature in econom ics finds evidence that the returns to early invest ments in children yield high returns to society (Heckman and Dimitriy Masterov 2007). That educational gaps exist and worsen over time is troubling as educational attainment is associated with a host of socioeconomic outcomes such as health, earnings, and wealth (David Cutler and Adriana Lleras-Muney 2008). At the same time, gaps in educational performance and outcomes are but one dimension of racial inequality. One area of research has been with respect to racial health disparities, which unlike educational dis parities appear at very early ages and increase over time (Linda Dynan (2009) provides a lit erature review). Little work, however, directly analyzes how health disparities in children may impact other outcomes.1 The fact that health out comes may lead to socioeconomic differences which themselves may lead to further health and
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.100.2.195
- Volume
- 100
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 195-199
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref