Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/232718 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 13966
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
The behavioral revolution within economics has been largely driven by psychological insights, with the sister sciences playing a lesser role. This study leverages insights from sociology to explore the role of neighborhoods on human capital formation at an early age. We do so by estimating the spillover effects from a large-scale early childhood intervention on the educational attainment of over 2,000 disadvantaged children in the United States. We document large spillover effects on both treatment and control children who live near treated children. Interestingly, the spillover effects are localized, decreasing with the spatial distance to treated neighbors. Perhaps our most novel insight is the underlying mechanisms at work: the spillover effect on non-cognitive scores operate through the child's social network while parental investment is an important channel through which cognitive spillover effects operate. Overall, our results reveal the importance of public programs and neighborhoods on human capital formation at an early age, highlighting that human capital accumulation is fundamentally a social activity.
Subjects: 
early education
social activity
neighborhood
field experiment
spillover effects
non-cognitive skills
JEL: 
C93
I21
R1
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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