Human Capital Development: New Evidence on the Production of Socio-emotional Skills

Mitchell, Mark and Favara, Marta and Porter, Catherine and Sánchez, Alan (2022) Human Capital Development: New Evidence on the Production of Socio-emotional Skills. Working Paper. The Department of Economics, Lancaster.

Text (LancasterWP2022_007)
LancasterWP2022_007.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial.
Download (2MB)

Abstract

We estimate a dynamic model of socio-emotional skill development between ages 8-22 for a Peruvian cohort born in 1994. At age 8 there is no wealth gradient, in contrast to cognitive skills. However, by age 12 inequalities emerge and widen through age 19, driven by differential household investments, and cross-productivity with cognitive skills. In early adulthood, we separate socio-emotional skills into two distinct domains – social skills and task effectiveness - that evolve differently, and are differently correlated with risky behaviours such as smoking or taking drugs. Unequal initial household resources perpetuate inequality across generations through cognitive and task effectiveness skills.