What Matter for Child Development?

Abstract

This paper estimates production functions of child cognitive and social development using a panel data of nine-year old children each with over two hundred home and school inputs as well as family background variables. A tree regression method is used to conduct estimation under various specifications. A small subset of inputs is found consistently important in explaining variances of child development results, including the number of books a child has at various ages and how often a mother reads to child by age five, while the effects of race and maternal employment are negligible when detailed inputs are controlled.child development, tree regression method, panel data inequality, economic development