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on Neuroeconomics |
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Issue of 2022‒03‒07
three papers chosen by |
| By: | Daniel S. Hamermesh; Gerard A. Pfann |
| Abstract: | Using Dutch time-diary data from 1975-2005 covering over 10,000 respondents for 7 consecutive days each, we show that individuals’ sleep time exhibits both variability and volatility characterized by stationary autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity: The absolute values of deviations from a person’s average sleep on one day are positively correlated with those on the next day. Sleep is more variable on weekends and among people with less education, who are younger and who do not have young children at home. Volatility is greater among parents with young children, slightly greater among men than women, but independent of other demographics. A theory of economic incentives to minimize the dispersion of sleep predicts that higher-wage workers will exhibit less dispersion, a result demonstrated using extraneous estimates of earnings equations to impute wage rates. Volatility in sleep spills over onto volatility in other personal activities, with no reverse causation onto sleep. The results illustrate a novel dimension of economic inequality and could be applied to a wide variety of human behavior and biological processes. |
| JEL: | C22 I14 J22 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29658&r= |
| By: | Duncan Webb (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | A large literature points towards the importance of early life circumstance in determining long-run human capital and wellbeing outcomes. This literature often justifies a focus on the very early years by citing the first 1000 days of life as a 'critical period' for child development, but this notion has rarely been directly tested. In a setting in which children are potentially subject to shocks in every year of their childhood, I estimate the impact of early life weather shocks on adult cognitive and socioemotional outcomes for individuals born in rural Indonesia between 1988 and 2000. There is a strong critical period for these shocks at age 2 for cognitive development, but no similar critical period for socioemotional development. The impacts of the shocks are likely to be taking place through nutritional and agricultural income channels. These impacts are initially latent, only appearing after age 15. I show suggestive evidence for dynamic complementarity in early life investments. |
| Keywords: | Critical period,Human capital,Early childhood development,Dynamic complementarity |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-03542607&r= |
| By: | Anna Gassman-Pines; Elizabeth Ananat; John Fitz-Henley II; Jane Leer |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected American children, including disruptions to their care and school settings. Children attending in-person child care or school have contended with unpredictable closures and time in remote school, which in turn is subject to its own types of disruptions (hardware, software, and internet failures). This study investigated the frequency and consequences of disruptions to children’s child care and school arrangements during fall 2020. The study includes a representative sample of hourly service-sector workers parents of a young child from a major U.S. city (N = 679); half are non-Hispanic Black, 23% are Hispanic; 18% are non-Hispanic White. Parents were asked to complete 30 days of daily surveys about whether their care and school arrangements went smoothly and as predicted that day, and about their mood, parenting behaviors, and children’s behavior. Results showed that daily disruptions to care and school were common, with families reporting a disruption on 24% of days. Families with children in remote schooling experienced more frequent disruption than families with children in in-person care or school. For all families, care or school disruptions strongly predicted worse child behavior, more negative parental mood, and increased likelihood of losing temper and punishment. |
| JEL: | I0 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29659&r= |