Whether government transfer programs increase the human capital of low-income children is a question of first-order policy importance. Such policies might help poor children if their parents are credit constrained, and so under-invest in their human capital. But it is also possible that whatever...

Human capital is invariably found to be an important explanatory variable of various proxies for well being (WB), i.e. income, happiness, job and life satisfaction, health status. Nevertheless, to date few systematic efforts have been made to explain its various and interconnected functions. The...

This paper presents findings from an experimental evaluation of Job Corps, the nation’s largest training program for disadvantaged youths. The study uses survey data collected over four years and tax data over nine years on a nationwide sample of 15,400 treatments and controls. The Job Corps...

This paper develops a model of skill formation that explains a variety of findings established in the child development and child intervention literatures. At its core is a technology that is stage-specific and that features self productivity, dynamic complementarity and skill multipliers....

Universal parental leaves with job protection and earnings compensation increase women’s attachment to the labour market, but very long leaves may have negative consequences both at the individual and the societal level. Some scholars have therefore argued that generous family-friendly...

This paper studies the effect of improved neonatal health care on mortality and long run academic achievement in school. We use the idea that medical treatments often follow rules of thumb for assigning care to patients, such as the classification of Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW), which assigns...

This paper provides an ex ante assessment of the implementation of the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program in the Philippines, called Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino. The study investigates the impact of CCT on current poverty and that of this extra money on school attendance under different...