What Determines Adult Cognitive Skills? Impacts of Pre-Schooling, Schooling and Post-Schooling Experiences in Guatemala

Most investigations of the importance of and the determinants of adult cognitive skills assume that (a) they are produced primarily by schooling and (b) schooling is statistically predetermined. But these assumptions may lead to misleading inferences about impacts of schooling and of pre-schooling and post-schooling experiences on adult cognitive skills. This study uses an unusually rich longitudinal data set collected over 35 years in Guatemala to investigate production functions for adult (i) reading-comprehension and (ii) nonverbal cognitive skills as dependent on behaviorally-determined pre-schooling, schooling and post-schooling experiences. Major results are: (1) Schooling has significant and substantial impact on adult reading comprehension (but not on adult nonverbal cognitive skills)—but estimates of this impact are biased upwards substantially if there are no controls for behavioral determinants of schooling in the presence of persistent unobserved factors such as genetic endowments and/or if family background factors that appear to be correlated with genetic endowments are included among the first-stage instruments. (2) Both pre-schooling and post-schooling experiences have substantial significant impacts on one or both of the adult cognitive skill measures that tend to be underestimated if these pre- and post-schooling experiences are treated as statistically predetermined—in contrast to the upward bias for schooling, which suggests that the underlying physical and job-related components of genetic endowments are negatively correlated with those for cognitive skills. (3) The failure in most studies to incorporate pre- and post-schooling experiences in the analysis of adult cognitive skills or outcomes affected by adult cognitive skills is likely to lead to misleading over-emphasis on schooling relative to these pre-and post-schooling experiences. (4) Gender differences in the coefficients of the adult cognitive skills production functions are not significant, suggesting that most of the fairly substantial differences in adult cognitive skills favoring males on average originate from gender differences in schooling attainment and in experience in skilled jobs favoring males. These four sets of findings are of substantial interest in themselves. But they also have important implications for broader literatures, reinforcing the importance of early life investments in disadvantaged children in determining adult skills and options, pointing to limitations in the cross-country growth literature of using schooling of adults to represent human capital, supporting hypotheses about the importance of childhood nutrition and work complexity in explaining the “Flynn effect” of substantial increases in measured cognitive skills over time, and questioning the interpretation of studies that report productivity impacts of cognitive skills without controlling for the endogeneity of such skills.

By-product utilization : coffee pulp; final report

The effect of quality and variety of coffee on the chemical composition and digestibility of coffee pulp is discussed. The nutritive value of pulp treated with various additives in the feed of cattle is studied

Dietary intakes and food sources of fat and fatty acids in Guatemalan schoolchildren: A cross-sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Consumption of healthy diets that contribute with adequate amounts of fat and fatty acids is needed for children. Among Guatemalan children, there is little information about fat intakes. Therefore, the present study sought to assess intakes of dietary fats and examine food sources of those fats in Guatemalan children.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study subjects consisted of a convenience sample of 449 third- and fourth-grade schoolchildren (8-10 y), attending public or private schools in Quetzaltenango City, Guatemala. Dietary data was obtained by means of a single pictorial 24-h record.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The percentages of total energy (%E) from total fat, saturated fat (SFA) and monounsaturated fat (MUFA) reached 29%E for total fat and 10%E for each SFA and MUFA, without gender differences. %E from fats in high vs. low-socio economic status (SES) children were significantly higher for boys, but not for girls, for total fat (p = 0.002) and SFA (p < 0.001). Large proportions of the children had low levels of intakes of some fatty acids (FA), particularly for n-3 FA, with >97% of all groups consuming less than 1%E from this fats. Fried eggs, sweet rolls, whole milk and cheese were main sources of total fat and, SFA. Whole milk and sweet bread were important sources of n-3 FA for high- and low-SES boys and girls, respectively. Fried plantain was the main source of n-3 FA for girls in the high-SES group. Fried fish, seafood soup, and shrimp, consumed only by boys in low amounts, were sources of eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA) acids, which may explain the low intakes of these nutrients.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>α-linolenic acid, EPA and DHA were the most limiting fatty acids in diets of Guatemalan schoolchildren, which could be partially explained by the low consumption of sources of these nutrients, particularly fish and seafood (for EPA and DHA). This population will benefit from a higher consumption of culturally acceptable foods that are rich in these limiting nutrients.</p