tailieunhanh - Aggregate Economic Shocks, Child Schooling, and Child Health

The first step in materials development is a well-designed plan. It provides a clear and concise summary of your project, project justification, project goals, a workplan, a realistic timeline, and a detailed budget. Planning will help you make good decisions and will help you and your staff stay focused on the project, even when things go wrong. Planning also helps you define, and later measure, success. PATH recommends you put your plan in writing. This means documenting your research, writing out your communications objectives, and creating a detailed, step-by-step workplan and budget. Although this may seem like a lot of work, it will help ensure your final. | The World Bank Research Observer Advance Access published July 8 2009 Aggregate Economic Shocks Child Schooling and Child Health Francisco H. G. Ferreira and Norbert Schady Do aggregate income shocks such as those caused by macroeconomic crises or droughts reduce child human capital The answer to this question has important implications for public policy. If shocks reduce investments in children they may have a long-lasting impact on poverty and its intergenerational transmission. The authors develop a simple framework to analyze the effects of aggregate economic shocks on child schooling and health. They show that the expected effects are theoretically ambiguous because of a tension between income and substitution effects. They then review the recent empirical literature on the subject. In richer countries like the United States child health and education outcomes are counter-cyclical they improve during recessions. In poorer countries mostly in Africa and low-income Asia the outcomes are procyclical infant mortality rises and school enrollment and nutrition fall during recessions. In the middle-income countries of Latin America the picture is more nuanced health outcomes are generally procyclical and education outcomes counter-cyclical. Each of these findings is consistent with the simple conceptual framework. The authors discuss possible implications for expenditure allocation. JEL codes I30 J13 O15 Investments in children s health and education have long-term consequences. In both the United States and the United Kingdom low levels of cognitive development in childhood measured by a child s performance in tests administered as early as 22 months of age have been shown to be important predictors of adult wages Currie and Thomas 1999 Case and Paxson 2008 . In developing countries long-term panels suggest that adverse experiences in early childhood result in worse outcomes in adulthood. A well-known study in Jamaica shows that children who were stunted had .