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Title: Child Mental Health and Human Capital Accumulation: The Case of ADHD
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Currie, Janet Stabile, Mark |
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Child Mental Health and Human Capital Accumulation: The Case of ADHD NBER Working Paper No. 10435, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2004. Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w10435.pdf Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Attention/Attention Deficit; Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Canada, Canadian; Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY); Child Health; Cross-national Analysis; Family Income; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); School Progress We examine U.S. and Canadian children with symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the most common child mental health problem. ADHD increases the probability of delinquency and grade repetition, reduces future reading and mathematics scores, and increases the probability of special education. The estimated effects are remarkably similar in the two countries, and are robust to many specification changes.Moreover, even moderate symptoms have large negative effects relative to the effects of poor physical health. The probability of treatment increases with income in the U.S., but not in Canada. However, in models of outcomes, interactions between income and ADHD scores are statistically insignificant in the U.S. (except for delinquency), while in Canada these interactions indicate that higher income is protective. The U.S. results are consistent with a growing psychological literature which suggests that conventional treatments for ADHD improve behavior, but have inconsistent effects on cognitive performance. We use data from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) and from the American NLSY. The NLSCY is a national longitudinal data set which surveyed children ages 0-11 and their families beginning in 1994.8 Follow up surveys were conducted in 1996 and 1998. The initial sample consisted of approximately 22,831 children in 1994. We restrict our sample to those children who were between the ages of 4 and 11 in 1994, and who were surveyed in both 1994 and 1998. We keep only those children who were given the hyperactivity screener in 1994 which yields a sample of just under 4000 children. For our analyses that use math and reading test scores we have a smaller sample (not all children's test scores were recorded and we discuss this further below) of approximately 2200. We use the NLSCY data to ask how hyperactivity in 1994 affects treatment in 1994 and outcomes in 1998. Also: The NBER Working Paper No. 10435 was updated in July 2004: http://www.econ.ucla.edu/people/papers/currie/more/mental.pdf |
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Bibliography Citation
Currie, Janet and Mark Stabile. "Child Mental Health and Human Capital Accumulation: The Case of ADHD." NBER Working Paper No. 10435, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2004. |