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Posts Tagged ‘Children’

The Coolest Child Care Program You’ve Never Heard Of

During World War II, U.S. women entered the workforce in record numbers — factories full of “Rosie the Riveters” producing planes and munitions for the war effort.  In response, Congress passed the Lanham Act of 1940, which administered and subsidized a large childcare system in 635 communities in the whole country except New Mexico from 1943-1946.  A new paper by Chris Herbst examines the effects of the Lanham Act; his research is particularly relevant in light of President Barack Obama‘s push for universal preschool.  “What’s intriguing about the Lanham Act is that it’s the U.S.’s first, and only, laboratory within which to assess universal child care,” writes Herbst in an email about the paper. “It may just be the coolest child care program you’ve never heard of.”  Here’s the abstract:

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the Lanham Act of 1940, a heavily-subsidized and universal child care program that was administered throughout the U.S. during World War II. I begin by estimating the impact of the Lanham Act on maternal employment using 1940 and 1950 Census data in a difference-in-difference-in-differences framework. The evidence suggests that mothers’ paid work increased substantially following the introduction of the child care program.



Preschool for Everyone?

Earlier this year, President Obama announced a plan to provide public pre-K education to low- and middle-income children, a proposal that has provoked debate about the actual demonstrated benefits of early education.  As Freakonomics guest contributors John List and Uri Gneezy wrote here a few months ago, there’s a frustrating lack of information on how effective these kinds of programs are — although List and Gneezy are trying to rectify that gap with their Chicago Heights research project.

A new working paper (abstract; PDF) by Elizabeth U. Cascio and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach attempts to shed some light on the question by analyzing the effects of universal public preschool programs in Georgia and Oklahoma, two states that have already implemented such programs.  Their findings are interesting: the programs seem to improve some outcomes for lower-income kids, but also result in higher-income families shifting kids from private to public preschool.  Here’s the abstract:



Where Does "Character" Come From?

A new working paper (abstract; PDF) by James Heckman and Tim Kautz looks at the relationship between “character” and student achievement as measured by test scores. Long story short: achievement tests don’t necessarily measure what will often matter most once students hit the real world.

This paper reviews the recent literature on measuring and boosting cognitive and noncognitive skills.  The literature establishes that achievement tests do not adequately capture character skills–personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences–that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many other domains. Their predictive power rivals that of cognitive skills.  Reliable measures of character have been developed.  All measures of character and cognition are measures of performance on some task.  In order to reliably estimate skills from tasks, it is necessary to standardize for incentives, effort, and other skills when measuring any particular skill.

Character is a skill, not a trait.  At any age, character skills are stable across different tasks, but skills can change over the life cycle. Character is shaped by families, schools, and social environments.  Skill development is a dynamic process, in which the early years lay the foundation for successful investment in later years.



If Your Parents Drove a Ford, Do You?

Most adults have vivid memories of the cars of their childhoods — the wood-paneled station wagons (with backwards-facing rear seats, no less) or the boxy minivans in which they were driven to school or church.  But how much do those memories affect people’s car-buying decisions in adulthood?  That’s the question asked in a new paper (draft PDF; abstract) by Soren T. Anderson, Ryan Kellogg, Ashley Langer, and James M. Sallee:

We document a strong correlation in the brand of automobile chosen by parents and their adult children, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. This correlation could represent transmission of brand preferences across generations, or it could result from correlation in family characteristics that determine brand choice. We present a variety of empirical specifications that lend support to the former interpretation and to a mechanism that relies at least in part on state dependence. We then discuss implications of intergenerational brand preference transmission for automakers’ product-line strategies and for the strategic pricing of vehicles to different age groups.



Why Are the Japanese No Longer Interested in Sex?

From the Guardian:

Japan’s under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren’t even dating, and increasing numbers can’t be bothered with sex. For their government, “celibacy syndrome” is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world’s lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060.

And:

The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) Although there has long been a pragmatic separation of love and sex in Japan – a country mostly free of religious morals – sex fares no better. A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 “were not interested in or despised sexual contact.” More than a quarter of men felt the same way.

 The article contains a number of speculations as to cause, well worth reading. At least the Malthusians will be happy.



Paying Kids to Go to School Instead of Working

A new working paper (abstract; PDF) by Eric V. Edmonds and Maheshwor Shrestha analyzes whether schooling incentives (in the form of conditional cash transfers) effectively reduce child labor, which is a persistent problem in developing countries.  Their conclusion: you get what you pay for.  From the abstract: 

Can efforts to promote education deter child labor? We report on the findings of a field experiment where a conditional transfer incentivized the schooling of children associated with carpet factories in Nepal. We find that schooling increases and child involvement in carpet weaving decreases when schooling is incentivized. As a simple static labor supply model would predict, we observe that treated children resort to their counterfactual level of school attendance and carpet weaving when schooling is no longer incentivized. From a child labor policy perspective, our findings imply that “You get what you pay for” when schooling incentives are used to combat hazardous child labor.



Good News for Child Obesity

We’ve blogged before about America’s rising obesity rate and how to fight it, but the battle may have just gotten a little easier. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows obesity rates dropping for low-income preschool children in 19 states between 2008 and 2011. From the Wall Street Journal:

The obesity analysis, by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, was based on data from 11.6 million children age 2 to 4. The survey group included children eligible for federally funded programs of maternal and child health and nutrition, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as the WIC program.

The decline was greatest in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the obesity rate in such children fell to 11% in 2011 from 13.6% in 2008. Drops of more than one percentage point were also seen in Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Missouri, and South Dakota.

Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, called the results a “bright spot” and a “tipping point.”

“For the first time in a generation, we’re seeing it go in the right direction in 2- to 4-year-olds,” he said on a conference call with reporters, calling the changes “small but statistically significant.” He was quick to add, “We’re very, very far from being out of the woods.”

Of the 43 states measured, obesity rates for preschool children rose in 3 states and remained the same same in 21 states.



Does Living With Children Make the Elderly Miserable?

A new working paper (gated) by Angus Deaton and Arthur A. Stone is called “Grandpa and the Snapper: the Wellbeing of the Elderly who Live with Children”:

Elderly Americans who live with people under age 18 have lower life evaluations than those who do not.  They also experience worse emotional outcomes, including less happiness and enjoyment, and more stress, worry, and anger.  In part, these negative outcomes come from selection into living with a child, especially selection on poor health, which is associated with worse outcomes irrespective of living conditions.  Yet even with controls, the elderly who live with children do worse.  This is in sharp contrast to younger adults who live with children, likely their own, whose life evaluation is no different in the presence of the child once background conditions are controlled for.  Parents, like elders, have enhanced negative emotions in the presence of a child, but unlike elders, also have enhanced positive emotions.  In parts of the world where fertility rates are higher, the elderly do not appear to have lower life evaluations when they live with children; such living arrangements are more usual, and the selection into them is less negative.  They also share with younger adults the enhanced positive and negative emotions that come with children.  The misery of the elderly living with children is one of the prices of the demographic transition.



Kids Attracted to Medical-Marijuana Candy?

A new paper in JAMA Pediatrics finds that a small number of children are showing up in Colorado emergency rooms having unintentionally ingested marijuana. It seems they are gobbling up their grandparents’ medical-marijuana candy. The paper is gated but Medical News Today summarizes:

As background information, the authors, from the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center, Denver, explained that medical marijuana has higher levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) than when used recreationally. They added that medical marijuana is sold in candies, soft drinks and baked goods. … There is concern that parents/grandparents may not disclose their use of medical marijuana because of the perceived stigma associated with the drug.



Does Child Abuse Rise During a Recession?

How do economic conditions affect the incidence of child abuse?  While researchers have found that poverty and child abuse are linked, there’s been no evidence that downturns increase abuse.  A new working paper (PDF; abstract) by economists Jason M. Lindo, Jessamyn Schaller, and Benjamin Hansen “addresses this seeming contradiction.” Here’s the abstract, with a key finding in bold:

Using county-level child abuse data spanning 1996 to 2009 from the California Department of Justice, we estimate the extent to which a county’s reported abuse rate diverges from its trend when its economic conditions diverge from trend, controlling for statewide annual shocks. The results of this analysis indicate that overall measures of economic conditions are not strongly related to rates of abuse. However, focusing on overall measures of economic conditions masks strong opposing effects of economic conditions facing males and females: male layoffs increase rates of abuse whereas female layoffs reduce rates of abuse. These results are consistent with a theoretical framework that builds on family-time-use models and emphasizes differential risks of abuse associated with a child’s time spent with different caregivers.



Taking on the Myths of Child Mortality

Hans Rosling, whose fantastic animated-data talks have been featured here before, has a new one about child-mortality trends.

The video was timed to coincide with the release of Bill Gates‘s 2013 Annual Letter, which notes successful health reforms in Ethiopia and the importance of quality measurements.  “[A]ny innovation — whether it’s a new vaccine or an improved seed — can’t have an impact unless it reaches the people who will benefit from it,” writes Gates.



A Health Upside of Natural Gas

A working paper (PDF; abstract) from economists Resul Cesur, Erdal Tekin, and Aydogan Ulker explores the effects of increased natural gas use on infant mortality:

In this paper, we use the variation across space and time in the expansion of natural gas infrastructure in Turkish provinces using data between 2001 and 2011. Our results indicate that the rate of increase in the use of natural gas has resulted in a significant reduction in the rate of infant mortality in Turkey. In particular, a one-percentage point increase in the rate of subscriptions to natural gas services would cause the infant mortality rate to decline by 4 percent, which could result in 348 infant lives saved in 2011 alone. These results are robust to a large number of specifications.

The authors outline two ways through which the effect may occur:



How Is Early-Childhood Intervention Like Compound Interest?

Jason Fletcher, who teaches public health at Yale, has written earlier on the connection between ADHD and crime. (The gist: “children who experience ADHD symptoms face a substantially increased likelihood of engaging in many types of criminal activities.”) He now has a new working paper called “The Effects of Childhood ADHD on Adult Labor Market Outcomes” (abstract, PDF):

While several types of mental illness, including substance abuse disorders, have been linked with poor labor market outcomes, no current research has been able to examine the effects of childhood ADHD.  As ADHD has become one of the most prevalent childhood mental conditions, it is useful to understand the full set of consequences of the illness.  This paper uses a longitudinal national sample, including sibling pairs, to show important labor market outcome consequences of ADHD.  The employment reduction is between 10-14 percentage points, the earnings reduction is approximately 33%, and the increase in social assistance is 15 points, which are larger than many estimates of the black-white earnings gap and the gender earnings gap.  A small share of the link is explained by education attainments and co-morbid health conditions and behaviors.  The results also show important differences in labor market consequences by family background and age of onset. These findings, along with similar research showing that ADHD is linked with poor education outcomes and adult crime, suggest that treating childhood ADHD can substantially increase the acquisition of human capital.

The more research of this sort that we see, the easier it is to believe the following: compound interest may indeed be the eighth wonder of the world, but early-childhood investment and intervention is probably Wonder 7.5.



Surprising New Findings on Obesity

One of the first Freakonomics Radio podcasts we made was an episode about the (surprisingly tenuous) link between obesity and health problems. A new study in The Journal of the American Medical Association finds that “Grade 1 obesity overall was not associated with higher mortality, and overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality.”  Writing for The Daily Beast, Kent Sepkowitz explains:

Compared to people with a normal weight (a BMI less than 25), the overweight (BMI between 25 to 30) had a 6 percent lower mortality rate—and both groups had a rate about 15 percent lower than the obese, especially the very obese (BMI above 35).

The explanation for the finding is uncertain. Perhaps the pleasantly plump but not obese have an extra reserve—a literal spare tire—that confers a survival advantage should they become seriously ill, whereas the lean-iacs do not. Or maybe the thin ones were thin because of a serious illness that, in the course the various studies, killed them. Or maybe the thin ones were thin because they were chain smokers living off Scotch and potato chips. Or just maybe the occasional pig-out does soothe the soul and make for a happier, healthier individual.

(HT: Andrew Sullivan)



Evidence That Myopia Has a Strong Environmental Cause

Time reports on a new study on why Asians have a higher rate of nearsightedness:

It has long been thought that nearsightedness is mostly a hereditary problem, but researchers led by Ian Morgan of Australian National University say the data suggest that environment has a lot more to do with it.

Reporting in the journal Lancet, the authors note that up to 90% of young adults in major East Asian countries, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, are nearsighted. The overall rate of myopia in the U.K., by contrast, is about 20% to 30%.



An Economics Lesson from Law and Order SVU

I watched a Law and Order SVU re-run last night, remarkably one that I hadn’t seen before. In the episode, an infant dies of measles contracted from another child whose parents refuse to vaccinate her.  (Infants are not vaccinated against measles.)  This is a classic case of whether concerns about potential negative externalities outweigh the desire to keep the government from dictating private behavior (vaccination). We already permit both approaches: we mandate vaccines for children to enter public school, and allow parents (as in this TV show) the choice of not vaccinating pre-schoolers.  



Markets in the Air

I stumbled on this nifty business idea, Nanny in the Clouds, to create a market in the air for nannies. Think match.com, but for wanna-be-nannies and parents on airplanes.

A clear market failure: people on flights with kids want some help; other people on flights want to make some money taking care of kids. Social norms don’t really allow for instantaneous markets to appear (“hey, for $10 I’ll watch your kid for the next two hours so that you can take a nap” is unlikely to get many takers, I suspect). But prearranged, where the norm adheres to our expectations in the babysitter market, and we have a market helping make trades otherwise not made.  

Here is how it works: Sign up on the website, put in the flight you’re going to take, and see if any parents (nannies) signed up and are looking for a nanny (parent who wants a nanny) on the same flight. Negotiate your rates directly, and pay Nanny in the Clouds $10 if the match is made.



How to Get Your Kid to Do Chores

There’s a new iPad app for parents to incentivize children to do chores. HighScore House! sets up a market for parents and children to assign points to chores and exchange those points for rewards.

Co-founder Kyle Seaman tells us that they’ve tracked 150,000 tasks from about 6,000 users in their beta version (full version will launch in a couple months).

HighScore House! shared some data with us: 43 percent of their users are kids between 5 and 9 years old, with an average task completion rate of 54 percent. Girls have a 2 percent higher completion rate than boys. In general, kids seem to favor low-hanging fruit: lower value tasks (usually easier ones) have a higher completion rate. 



The Mathematics of Magic

I don’t particularly like math.  I’ve never been a fan of magic either.  For some reason, however, when I heard about a new book entitled Magical Mathematics written by two first-rate mathematicians, Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham, I felt compelled to buy it and read it.

I have to say that it is really good, and I would highly recommend it to any nerd.  It is a really artful melding of card tricks that are remarkable, with explanations of the underlying math concepts that are at one level so simple and clear that almost anyone could get the basic intuition for what they are talking about, but at another level so deep and difficult that it is probably hopeless for someone like me to ever truly understand. 



What's Wrong With Cash for Grades? (Ep. 83)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “What’s Wrong With Cash for Grades?”

(You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)

In it, Steve Levitt talks to Kai Ryssdal about whether it’s effective to pay kids to do well in school. Levitt, along with John ListSusanne Neckermann, and Sally Sadoff, recently wrote up a working paper (PDF here) based on their field experiments in Chicago schools. Levitt blogged about the paper earlier; here’s the Atlantic‘s take.



The Perils of Technology, iPad Edition

These days, I read a lot of books on an iPad 2 using the Kindle app. It is for the most part a very good experience, especially for recreational reading. As millions of others have noted, having an electronic device loaded up with a mini-library of e-books is especially valuable while traveling, which is when I do a lot of my reading.

The other day, on vacation with the family, I came across a pitfall. I was reading the old football novel North Dallas Forty (thanks to Henry for the suggestion, and all of you for other suggestions). It’s pretty entertaining — especially the race stuff and drug stuff. As it happened, my 9-year-old daughter was curled up beside me reading her book (The Doll People). She took at look at what I was reading. Her eyes immediately found a four-letter word.



Cash Transfers: The Key to Keeping the World's Working Kids in School?

A new paper from Eric V. Edmonds and Norbert Schady finds that cash transfer programs in developing countries may keep kids in school and out of the labor force. From the abstract:

Poor women with children in Ecuador were selected at random for a cash transfer equivalent to 7 percent of monthly expenditures. The transfer is greater than the increase in schooling costs at the end of primary school, but it is less than 20 percent of median child labor earnings in the labor market. Poor families with children in school at the time of the award use the extra income to postpone the child’s entry into the labor force. Students in families induced to take-up the cash transfer by the experiment reduce their involvement in paid employment by 78 percent and unpaid economic activity inside their home by 32 percent.



Want Smarter Kids? Space Them (At Least) Two Years Apart

A new study (PDF here) by University of Notre Dame economist Kasey Buckles and graduate student Elizabeth Munnich finds that siblings spaced more than two years apart have higher reading and math scores than children born closer together. The positive effects were seen only in older siblings, not in younger ones.

The authors attribute at least part of the difference to older children getting more of their parents’ time during the first formative years of their lives before a younger sibling comes along.



High IQ in Children Linked to Drug Use Later in Life

A new British study has found that people who scored well on IQ tests as children are more likely to be drug users as adults, especially women. Authors James White and G. David Batty published their study online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, and looked at data from almost 8,000 people over several decades to test what habits and qualities are tied to drug use.

The results suggest that men with high IQ scores at 5 years-old are 50 percent more likely to use drugs by the age of 30 than those with low IQ scores. High IQ scoring women at 5 years-old are twice as likely to use drugs than their low IQ counterparts.



Incentivizing the School Commute

We’ve written about bribing kids to get better grades. But what about bribing them to walk or ride their bike to school?
A new working paper examines a program in Boulder, Colorado that attempted to incentivize kids to bike or walk to school over a span of several years. The program began with a $10 cash prize for the first two years, but then switched over to a $10 bike store coupon thereafter. One lucky student who rode and walked to school every day during a “prize period” won the coupon.
Even considering the small, non-cash winnings, biking and walking to school increased 16 percent during the prize period. Here’s the abstract:



Get Your Free Sperm Here!

The Daily Beast reports on an interesting phenomenon: sperm donors who donate for free.  One couple, stymied by the $2,000-and-up cost of acquiring sperm the usual way (sperm bank), started exploring alternative options online…



Study: Early Bedtimes Keep Kids Slimmer

A new study out of Australia shows that children who go to sleep early and wake up early are less likely to be obese. The results, published in the Oct. 1 issue of the journal Sleep, indicate that it’s not so much the amount of sleep kids get, but the times at which they get it that has the biggest impact on their weight.



Why Do Housing Vouchers Lead to Fewer Deaths Among Young Girls, But Not Boys?

A new NBER working paper by Brian Jacob, Jens Ludwig and Douglas Miller examines how improved housing conditions impact child mortality rates in Chicago. The improvement in child mortality seems to apply only to girls, and not boys. The data come from Chicago’s resuscitated housing voucher system, from 1997 through 2005. Here’s the abstract:
The study builds on the findings of the federal government’s Moving to Opportunity experiment, which started in the mid-1990s and offered randomly chosen residents of public housing the chance to move to a wealthier neighborhood (poverty below 10%). Among adults, rates of obesity and mental health problems declined, but the effects were mixed on the risky behaviors of kids. Girls did better, while boys did worse.



Addicted to My Grandchildren

A visit with two grandchildren this weekend, then the other four next weekend, then the eight and five-year old without their parents. What a delight! But no very little kids—the kids are now ages 15 to 5. I miss having tiny grandchildren, and I know that if another were to come along it would be as much or even more fun than the first. I guess I’m addicted to grandchildren. Sadly in some sense (although my sons’ and their wives’ lives are complicated enough without their having more kids), my addiction is being cured by an enforced “cold-turkey” regimen—no more grandchildren are likely to be forthcoming. That’s the best way to cure an addiction. With the average age at first marriage being 28 for men and 26 for women, odds are that it will be 15 years until great-grandchildren arrive. The life expectancy of a 68-year-old male is 15 years, so there’s a decent hope of rekindling my addiction—next time to great-grandchildren.



Our Daily Bleg: What Economic Concepts Should Kids Know?

This bleg comes from reader Wayne Smith, who asks for suggestions on which economic concepts are the most important for kids to learn:

What topics do the Freakonomics readers feel are most important to teach kids 8-13 years old? Aside, of course, from the fact that the man keeps you down.
I was listening to The History of Sesame Street audio book the other day and thought that it would be nice to come up with a YouTube show with decent production value that outlines basic economic concepts in an entertaining way. Concepts like capital, value, supply/demand, trade, time value of money, interest, saving and borrowing, opportunity cost, taxation,and so on. This would be more narrative than something like Khan Academy. Naturally each concept can have an episode devoted to it and each concept can be addressed in different ways in different episodes, but in scenarios geared toward kids. What do the readers think about this as a concept?