Search Results

Author: Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Resulting in 17 citations.
1. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Population Growth and Human Capital Investments: Theory and Evidence
Journal of Political Economy 98,5 (October 1990): S38-S70.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2937631
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Fertility; Human Capital Theory; Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care

This paper reviews evidence from studies that have examined the interrelationships among population growth, investments in human capital, and economic development. The first section discusses the effects of economic growth on fertility and school investment. Section two reviews evidence pertaining to the effects of changes in fertility on human capital. Data from a wide range of international and U.S. data bases are cited including fertility and birthweight information from the NLSY Children.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. "Population Growth and Human Capital Investments: Theory and Evidence." Journal of Political Economy 98,5 (October 1990): S38-S70.
2. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Welfare, Marital Prospects, and Nonmarital Childbearing
Journal of Political Economy 107,6 (December 1999): S3-S32.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/250102
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Keyword(s): Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Assortative Mating; Benefits; Children; Family Size; Fertility; Marriage; Women

The roles of the entitlements of the AFDC program and marital prospects in the fertility and marriage choices of young women are assessed in the context of a model incorporating heritable endowment heterogeneity, assortative mating, concern for child quality, and potential parental and public support alternatives. Estimates based on data describing the fertility and marital experience up to age 23 of the eight birth cohorts of women in the NLSY provide evidence that higher AFDC benefit levels and lower marital prospects induce young women to choose to have a child outside of marriage.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. "Welfare, Marital Prospects, and Nonmarital Childbearing." Journal of Political Economy 107,6 (December 1999): S3-S32.
3. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Are There Increasing Returns to the Intergenerational Production of Capital? Maternal Schooling and Child Intellectual Achievement
Working Paper, Prepared for the Workshop "Economic Well-Being of Women and Children" Minneapolis, MN, February 21-23, 1991
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Author
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Birthweight; Child Health; General Assessment; Human Capital; Mortality; Mothers, Education; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Siblings; Well-Being

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

A common empirical finding obtained from data sets describing both high and low-income households is a strong positive correlation between the educational attainment of mothers and measures of the human capital of their children, such as birthweight, survival, educational attainment or health. This relationship appears to be robust to "controls" for various measures of income. Two principal hypotheses have been suggested for why maternal education and offspring human capital outcomes are related. First, education may improve the efficiency of human capital production, so that there are increasing returns, intergenerationally, in parental human capital. This idea is embedded in the human capital (self) production model of Ben-Porath (1970) and is incorporated, for example, in the recent growth model of Becker et al. (1990). A second hypothesis is that the educational level of mothers is a function of their endowed or innate human capital, which is positively correlated with that of their children. More generally, it is suggested that unobservables affecting maternal education are correlated with the human capital of children net of any human capital investments in them.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Are There Increasing Returns to the Intergenerational Production of Capital? Maternal Schooling and Child Intellectual Achievement." Working Paper, Prepared for the Workshop "Economic Well-Being of Women and Children" Minneapolis, MN, February 21-23, 1991.
4. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Are There Increasing Returns to the Intergenerational Production of Human Capital? Maternal Schooling and Child Intellectual Achievement
Journal of Human Resources 29,2 (Spring 1994): 670-693.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/146115
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Birthweight; Childbearing; Children, Academic Development; Control; General Assessment; Heterogeneity; Human Capital; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Modeling; Mothers, Education; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Siblings; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT; Tests and Testing

A common empirical finding obtained from data sets describing both high and low-income households is a strong positive correlation between the educational attainment of mothers and measures of the human capital of their children, such as birthweight, survival, educational attainment or health This relationship appears to be robust controls for various measures of income. Two principal hypotheses have been suggested for why maternal education and offspring human capital outcomes are related. First, education may improve the efficiency of human capital production, so that there are increasing returns, intergenerationally, in parental human capital. Estimates from models that take into account heterogeneity in maternal endowments could not reject this hypothesis and suggest benefits to postponed childbearing. In particular, they suggest that postponement of the initiation of childbearin by two years among women who are tenth-graders would result in a 5 percent increase in their children's achievement test scores.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Are There Increasing Returns to the Intergenerational Production of Human Capital? Maternal Schooling and Child Intellectual Achievement." Journal of Human Resources 29,2 (Spring 1994): 670-693.
5. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Inequality Among Young Adult Siblings, Public Assistance Programs, and Intergenerational Living Arrangements
Journal of Human Resources 29,4 (Fall 1994): 1101-1125.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/146135
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Keyword(s): Age and Ageing; Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Coresidence; Earnings; Education; Endogeneity; Income; Siblings; Welfare

In this paper, we formulate a model of young-adult, parent and public sector interactions to consider the allocation of parental resources among siblings who are young adults. In particular, we examine the issue of the determination of the distribution of parental housing among young adult children, with particular attention to the role of public welfare programs. We model these decisions as a sample non-cooperative game between young adult children and their parents who take governmental welfare rules concerning assistance as exogenous to their decisions, but actual public support as endogenous. We show that identification of parental decision rules concerning the distribution of cursedness among multiple offspring requires information on the characteristics of parents and of all of the adult children as well as the governmental welfare rules that pertain to the area of residence of the parents and of each of the sibling children who may live apart from the parents. Information on the siblings represented in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) combined with information of state-level welfare rules, by year, is used to obtain estimates of parental co-residence decision rules in terms of the earnings, schooling and fertility choices of their children and potential welfare benefits based on estimation procedures that take into account, to varying degrees, missing information relevant to these decisions.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Inequality Among Young Adult Siblings, Public Assistance Programs, and Intergenerational Living Arrangements." Journal of Human Resources 29,4 (Fall 1994): 1101-1125.
6. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Inequality at Birth: The Scope for Policy Intervention
Journal of Econometrics 50,1-2 (October-November 1991): 205-225.
Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/030440769190096V
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Elsevier
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Child Health; Childbearing; Cigarette Use (see Smoking); Fertility; Mothers, Behavior; Mothers, Health; Parental Influences; Sons; Substance Use

In this paper, the authors utilize information on birthweight and gestational age among siblings and maternal behaviors relevant to birth outcomes to decompose the inequality (variance) in child health at birth into those components associated with variance in endowments, the correlation between health-relevant behaviors and endowments, and the correlation between health endowments and the environmental variables influencing the household choice set. Estimations are made of: (1) the effects of maternal behaviors, including substance abuse, cigarette smoking, prenatal care, birth spacing and timing, and weight gain on the two birth outcomes; (2) the variance in the health endowment common to the two measures and to siblings; (3) the covariances between the maternal behaviors and health endowments; and (4) the variance in measurement errors for each outcome variable. The results indicate that, despite the importance of many maternal behaviors in influencing birthweigh t, a substantial fraction of its variance is due to endowment variation. This result appears to be robust to what is assumed about the relative importance of the correlations between household constraints and the responsiveness of health-related parental behavior to endowments. For birthweight, it was found, moreover, that endowment variation is on net reinforced by parental resource allocations, although this effect is small. It was also found that for the NLSY sample most of the variance in gestation is measurement error, while for birthweight the "noise" component is only one-third of the total variance. The authors reject the hypothesis that gestation and birthweight measure a single health factor, with parental behaviors influencing each in distinctly different ways.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Inequality at Birth: The Scope for Policy Intervention." Journal of Econometrics 50,1-2 (October-November 1991): 205-225.
7. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Inequality at Birth: The Scope for Policy Intervention
Presented: Toronto, Canada, Population Association of America Meetings, May 1990
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Birthweight; Child Health; Childbearing; Cigarette Use (see Smoking); Fertility; Mothers, Health; Parental Influences; Sons; Substance Use

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Inequality at Birth: The Scope for Policy Intervention." Presented: Toronto, Canada, Population Association of America Meetings, May 1990.
8. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Intergenerational Support and the Life-Cycle Incomes of Parents and Children: Co-Residence and Interhousehold Financial Transfers
Working Paper, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1990
Cohort(s): Mature Women, Older Men, Young Men
Publisher: University of Minnesota
Keyword(s): Family Resources; Family Structure; Financial Assistance; Household Structure; Income; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Life Cycle Research; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Pairs (also see Siblings); Residence; Sons; Transfers, Financial; Transfers, Parental; Transfers, Private; Transfers, Public

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper examines the relationship between generations with particular attention to the two principal mechanisms by which parents provide resource to their young adult offspring--shared residence and financial transfers to offspring living apart. The analysis made use of parent-son pairs from the NLS of Young Men, Older Men, and Mature Women. These data indicate that: (1) intergenerational co-residence and interhousehold transfers are at least as important as governmental transfers in providing support for young adults, with 20 percent of adult men in their 20s receiving one or another form of parental support; (2) there are substantial differences by race in the type of intergenerational support with black men ages 18-31 appearing twice as likely as white men to reside with at least one parent and half as likely as white men to receive financial transfers when residing apart from their parents. Econometric analysis of the choices between shared residence and non-coresidence cum financial transfers were supportive of the theoretical framework linking these two transfer methods and strongly rejected aggregation of co-residence and interhousehold financial transfers as perfect substitutes. They also suggested that failure to control for unobserved permanent differences across households can lead to serious biases; in particular the obscuring of the important role of parental resources in determining the incidence of transfers. Fixed effects logit estimates indicated that for given parental incomes, young men are less likely to both co-reside with parents and to receive financial transfers while residing apart the higher are their current earnings. Moreover, young adults attending school are more likely to reside with parents but are less likely to receive aid while living elsewhere; in contrast, their unemployment induces both co-residence and financial transfers. Parental income, for given offspring earnings and activities, also matters. Parents with higher incomes are more likely to provide transfers to children via separate residence combined with remittances than they are to co-reside with children. Indeed, among black families in which the mother has less than eight years of schooling, increases in income (net of governmental transfers) reduce significantly the likelihood that parents reside with their adult sons. For mothers with schooling levels above eight years, however, the authors could explain all of the differences in the life-cycle patterns of intergenerational co-residence choices of black and white families based on the life-cycle differences in the earnings of both generations and the investment decisions and employment experiences of the younger generation.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Intergenerational Support and the Life-Cycle Incomes of Parents and Children: Co-Residence and Interhousehold Financial Transfers." Working Paper, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1990.
9. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Intergenerational Support and the Life-Cycle Incomes of Young Men and Their Parents: Human Capital Investments, Coresidence, and Intergenerational Financial Transfers
Journal of Labor Economics 11,1, Part 1: Essays in Honor of Jacob Mincer (January 1993): 84-112.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2535185.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Keyword(s): Earnings; Kinship; Life Cycle Research; Men's Studies; Transfers, Financial

This article examines the resource allocations of parents in the form of both shared residence with and financial transfers to their young adult sons. Based on an overlapping generations model incorporating a game between parents and adult children, estimates of the determinants of such transfers are obtained from the kinship-linked cohorts of the National Longitudinal Surveys. The estimates suggest that both types of parental assistance are as important as governmental transfers in supporting young men and are responsive to the current and anticipated earnings of their offspring, suggesting that young men cannot adequately smooth their consumption without parental help.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Intergenerational Support and the Life-Cycle Incomes of Young Men and Their Parents: Human Capital Investments, Coresidence, and Intergenerational Financial Transfers ." Journal of Labor Economics 11,1, Part 1: Essays in Honor of Jacob Mincer (January 1993): 84-112.
10. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Maternal Expectations and Ex Post Rationalizations The Usefulness of Survey Information on the Wantedness of Children
Journal of Human Resources 28,2 (Spring 1993): 205-229.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/146201
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Bias Decomposition; Birth Outcomes; Birthweight; Children; Contraception; Fertility; Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Wantedness

In this paper we assess the value of retrospectively-ascertained information on the wantedness of children by evaluating (i) the extent to which such information provides an unbiased estimate of the excess births occurring solely as a consequence of imperfect fertility control and (ii) whether information on the wantedness of a child is a good predictor of its subsequent treatment by parents--whether unwantedness signals neglect. We formulate a dynamic model of fertility incorporating stochastic fertility control, uncertain child traits and information accumulation from which we can formulate a rigorous definition of child-specific unwantedness. Based on information on both retrospectively obtained and pre-birth information on wantedness and on children's birthweight, we find that parents are more likely to report that children are wanted ex post if they have a better birth outcome and exhibit overly optimistic expectations about their children's traits and/or risk preferences. As a consequence, published statistics on the prevalence of unwanted births overstate the true proportion due to contraceptive failure by 26 percent. Data are from the NLSY a sample of 3,233 females who had a live birth by 1986.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Maternal Expectations and Ex Post Rationalizations The Usefulness of Survey Information on the Wantedness of Children." Journal of Human Resources 28,2 (Spring 1993): 205-229.
11. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Natural "Natural Experiments" in Economics
Journal of Economic Literature 38,4 (December 2000): 827-874.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2698663
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: American Economic Association
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Earnings; Educational Returns; Fertility; Heterogeneity; Income; Labor Supply; Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Savings; Siblings; Work Experience

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The costliness of and limitations on experiments involving human subjects have long been identified as major constraints on the progress of economic science. Indeed, it has been increasingly recognized that identification of many interesting parameters, such as the effects of schooling or work experience on earnings or of income on savings, requires attention to the fact that the variation in many of the variables whose effects are of interest may not be orthogonal to unobservable factors that jointly affect the outcomes studied. Such unmeasured or unmeasurable factors may include pre-existing or endowed skills ("ability"), preferences, or technologies that vary across individuals or firms in the economy. The possible existence of heterogeneity in these attributes means that almost all estimates are open to alternative interpretations in terms of self-selection by such traits. In determining the returns to schooling, for example, individuals cannot be considered to be randomly sorted among schooling levels. Thus, that more-schooled individuals have higher earnings may reflect the fact that more able individuals prefer schooling or face lower schooling costs. Similarly, that fertility and female labor supply are negatively correlated may reflect variation in preferences for children and work in the population.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Natural "Natural Experiments" in Economics." Journal of Economic Literature 38,4 (December 2000): 827-874.
12. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Parental and Public Transfers to Young Women and Their Children
American Economic Review 84,5 (December 1994): 1195-1212.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2117768
Cohort(s): NLSY79, Young Women
Publisher: American Economic Association
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Benefits; Coresidence; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Methods/Methodology; Parental Influences; Transfers, Financial; Transfers, Public; Welfare

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper presents estimates of how an increase in welfare benefits for the welfare-eligible affects the provision of parental support in the form of both financial transfers and shared residence based on an overlapping-generations framework incorporating game-theoretic interactions among parents, their adult children, and the government. The empirical results, obtained from two longitudinal data sets, indicate that the parents view a dollar of income earned by their daughters as equivalent to a dollar increase in welfare benefits. However, there exists only a small trade-off between the generosity of government aid and the incidence of parental aid. Copyright 1994 by American Economic Association.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Parental and Public Transfers to Young Women and Their Children." American Economic Review 84,5 (December 1994): 1195-1212.
13. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Rational Expectations and Ex Post Rationalizations: The Value of Subjective Measures of Excess Children
Working Paper, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1988
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Author
Keyword(s): Behavior; Birthweight; Children; Fertility; Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Wantedness

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper assesses the usefulness of an attitudinal fertility variable describing the "wantedness" of children. The authors formulate a dynamic model of fertility behavior which incorporates uncertainty about child traits in order to assess the informational content of retrospectively-ascertained measures of wantedness. Utilizing data from the NLSY, the authors test for bias in wantedness information that may arise from both parents' responsiveness to the observed characteristics of their children as well as from biases in their expectations about their children's endowed traits. Results indicate that reports of wantedness obtained after children are born are significantly influenced by children's traits (ex post rationalization) and that mothers exhibit overly optimistic expectations regarding their children's endowed qualities. As a result, the retrospective measure of wantedness commonly collected and used to measure the principal consequence of imperfect fertility control overstates substantially the actual incidence of unwanted births. The authors conclude that the incidence of unwantedness based on information obtained from cross-sectional fertility surveys neither measures appropriately the family size or resource-allocation consequences of imperfect or costly contraceptive technology nor is a reliable indicator of child neglect.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Rational Expectations and Ex Post Rationalizations: The Value of Subjective Measures of Excess Children." Working Paper, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1988.
14. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Sisters, Siblings and Mothers: The Effect of Teen-age Childbearing on Birth Outcomes in a Dynamic Family Context
Econometrica 63,2 (March 1995): 303-326.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2951628
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing, Inc. => Wiley Online
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Age at Birth; Birth Outcomes; Birthweight; Childbearing, Adolescent; Heterogeneity; Kinship; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Modeling, Instrumental Variables; Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Siblings; Sisters

A statistical model of dynamic intrafamily investment behavior incorporating endowment heterogeneity is estimated to evaluate alternative estimation procedures that have exploited family and kinship data. These procedures, which place alternative restrictions on the endowment structure and on behavior, include generalized least squares, instrumental-variables, fixed-effects based on the children of sisters, fixed-effects based on siblings, and sibling fixed-effects with instrumental variables. The framework is applied to data on birth outcomes, with focus on the effects of teen-age childbearing net of other maternal behavior. The empirical results imply that the least restrictive statistical formulation, consistent with dynamic behavior and heterogeneity among siblings, fits the data best. All of the estimation procedures that control for a family-specific endowment indicate, however, that the biological effect of having a birth at younger ages is to marginally increase birthweight and to increase fetal growth.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Sisters, Siblings and Mothers: The Effect of Teen-age Childbearing on Birth Outcomes in a Dynamic Family Context." Econometrica 63,2 (March 1995): 303-326.
15. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Sisters, Siblings and Mothers: The Effects of Teenage Childbearing on Birth Outcomes
Working Paper, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, November 1991
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Author
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Behavior; Birth Outcomes; Birthweight; Childbearing, Adolescent; Heterogeneity; Kinship; Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Siblings; Sisters

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The use of kinship data, particularly sibling information, as a means of reducing the effects of heterogeneity on estimates of the determinants of human capital is becoming increasingly common in economics. The most common applications have been directed to the questions of the returns to and determinants of schooling attainment. In this paper, we set out a statistical model incorporating the features of recent theoretical models of the family that highlight the roles of heterogeneity in endowments, endowment heritability and dynamic intrafamily investment behavior. The framework is used to show the nested (implicit) restrictions that characterize the statistical procedures that have exploited family and kinship data to obtain estimates of the determinants of children's human capital and thus to establish tests that discriminate among them. We show that information on the investments in and human capital outcomes of at least two children for mothers who are sisters is required to test among all possible estimators, although such data are not required to obtain estimates of the behavioral determinants of human capital outcomes with desirable properties. However, we show that such data can also reveal the intergenerational correlation (heritability) of endowments without the need to have information on outcomes or investments characterizing two generations.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Sisters, Siblings and Mothers: The Effects of Teenage Childbearing on Birth Outcomes." Working Paper, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, November 1991.
16. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
Sisters, Siblings, and Mothers: The Effects of Teen-age Childbearing on Birth Outcomes
Presented: Bethesda, MA, NICHD Conference, "Outcomes of Early Childbearing: An Appraisal of Recent Evidence", May 1992
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Behavior; Birth Outcomes; Childbearing, Adolescent; Heterogeneity; Kinship; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Modeling, Instrumental Variables; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Siblings; Sisters

effects of heterogeneity on estimates of the determinants of human capital is becoming increasingly common in economics. The most common applications have been directed to the questions of the returns to and determinants of schooling attainment. In this paper, we set out a statistical model incorporating the features of recent theoretical models of the family that highlight the roles of heterogeneity in endowments, endowment heritability and dynamic intrafamily investment behavior. The framework is used to show the nested (implicit) restrictions that characterize the statistical procedures that have exploited family and kinship data to obtain estimates of the determinants of children's human capital and thus to establish tests that discriminate among them. We show that information on the investments in and human capital outcomes of at least two children for mothers who are sisters is required to test among all possible estimators, although such data are not required to obtain estimates of the behavioral determinants of human capital outcomes with desirable properties. However, we show that such data can also reveal the intergenerational correlation (heritability) of endowments without the need to have information on outcomes or investments characterizing two generations.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Sisters, Siblings, and Mothers: The Effects of Teen-age Childbearing on Birth Outcomes." Presented: Bethesda, MA, NICHD Conference, "Outcomes of Early Childbearing: An Appraisal of Recent Evidence", May 1992.
17. Rosenzweig, Mark R.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
The Effect of the Timing and Frequency of Marijuana Use on Fetal Growth Based on Sibling Birth Data
Working Paper, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1990
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Author
Keyword(s): Alcohol Use; Birthweight; Cigarette Use (see Smoking); Deviance; Drug Use; Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Pregnancy and Pregnancy Outcomes; Siblings; Sons; Substance Use

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

A sample of 5669 births obtained from the NLSY is studied to investigate the effects of marijuana usage on fetal growth and the sensitivity of findings to the existence of both measured confounding risk factors associated with pregnancies and mothers and unmeasured risk factors characterizing mothers. In the bivariate relationships, infants born to women who smoked marijuana every month of the first trimester weighed 6.7 ounces less than women who did not smoke marijuana in the first trimester. Introducing controls for a large number of measured confounding risk factors identified in prior studies reduces the marijuana effect to 3.3 ounces. However, controlling in addition for all unmeasured attributes of the mother that are invariant across births using information on sibling births increases the estimated impact of marijuana use net of measured risk factors to 5.1 ounces, a value which is 52 percent higher than the standard multiple regression estimate. Further, the estimated marijuana effect obtained from this measure of use, which takes into account frequency and timing, is more than three times as large as the effect based only on a measure of ever-use in the first six months of pregnancy. The authors conclude that it is important to take into account unmeasured risk factors characterizing the mothers of infants in estimating the effects of substance use on fetal growth. Lack of controls for mother characteristics appear to lead to underestimates of the impact on fetal growth of the use of marijuana early into a pregnancy.
Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "The Effect of the Timing and Frequency of Marijuana Use on Fetal Growth Based on Sibling Birth Data." Working Paper, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1990.