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Title: Preventing Behavior Problems in Childhood and Adolescence: Evidence from Head Start
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Carneiro, Pedro M. Ginja, Rita |
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Preventing Behavior Problems in Childhood and Adolescence: Evidence from Head Start Presented: New York, NY, Society of Labor Economists Annual Meeting, May 2008. Also: http://client.norc.org/jole/SOLEweb/8201.pdf Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: National Opinion Research Center - NORC Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Behavior, Antisocial; Behavioral Problems; CESD (Depression Scale); Crime; Depression (see also CESD); Head Start; Health, Mental/Psychological; Obesity This paper shows that participation in Head Start decreases behavioral problems, grade repetition, and obesity of children at ages 12 and 13, and depression, criminal behavior, and obesity at ages 16 and 17. Head Start eligibility rules induce discontinuities in program participation as a function of income, which we use to identify program impacts. Since there is a range of discontinuities (they vary with family size, state and year), we identify the effect of Head Start for a large set of individuals, as opposed to a small set of people around a single discontinuity. We use data on females from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of the Youth (NLSY79) combined with a panel of their children, the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1979 (CNLSY79). We focus on the impact of the program in two age groups – children 12 to 13 (using the BPI scale and an indicator for smoking habits, indicators of grade repetition, special education attendance, and obesity) and adolescents 16 to 17 (using mental health and motivational outcomes using measures of depressive symptoms (the CESD), criminal behavior, smoking habits and obesity). |
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Bibliography Citation
Carneiro, Pedro M. and Rita Ginja. "Preventing Behavior Problems in Childhood and Adolescence: Evidence from Head Start." Presented: New York, NY, Society of Labor Economists Annual Meeting, May 2008. |