The Impact of Child Health and Family Inputs on Child Cognitive Develop-ment

Abstract

In this paper we extensively analyze the impact of child health and other family characteristics on the cognitive achievement of children between the ages of five and nine. We estimate both cross sectional and fixed effects models using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Several of our results challenge the conclusions found in the existing literature. First, we find only a weak relationship between several measures of child health and child cognitive development. Second, we find that additional maternal schooling does not improve child cognitive achievement. Finally, our estimates of the effect of mother's labor force participation suggest that working has a positive impact on child cognitive achievement.