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Inequality in socio-emotional skills: A cross-cohort comparison()

We examine changes in inequality in socio-emotional skills very early in life in two British cohorts born 30 years apart. We construct comparable scales using two validated instruments for the measurement of child behaviour and identify two dimensions of socio-emotional skills: ‘internalising’ and ‘...

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Autores principales: Attanasio, Orazio, Blundell, Richard, Conti, Gabriella, Mason, Giacomo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: North-Holland Pub. Co 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8543077/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34720241
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104171
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author Attanasio, Orazio
Blundell, Richard
Conti, Gabriella
Mason, Giacomo
author_facet Attanasio, Orazio
Blundell, Richard
Conti, Gabriella
Mason, Giacomo
author_sort Attanasio, Orazio
collection PubMed
description We examine changes in inequality in socio-emotional skills very early in life in two British cohorts born 30 years apart. We construct comparable scales using two validated instruments for the measurement of child behaviour and identify two dimensions of socio-emotional skills: ‘internalising’ and ‘externalising’. Using recent methodological advances in factor analysis, we establish comparability in the inequality of these early skills across cohorts, but not in their average level. We document for the first time that inequality in socio-emotional skills has increased across cohorts, especially for boys and at the bottom of the distribution. We also formally decompose the sources of the increase in inequality and find that compositional changes explain half of the rise in inequality in externalising skills. On the other hand, the increase in inequality in internalising skills seems entirely driven by changes in returns to background characteristics. Lastly, we document that socio-emotional skills measured at an earlier age than in most of the existing literature are significant predictors of health and health behaviours. Our results show the importance of formally testing comparability of measurements to study skills differences across groups, and in general point to the role of inequalities in the early years for the accumulation of health and human capital across the life course.
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spelling pubmed-85430772021-10-29 Inequality in socio-emotional skills: A cross-cohort comparison() Attanasio, Orazio Blundell, Richard Conti, Gabriella Mason, Giacomo J Public Econ Article We examine changes in inequality in socio-emotional skills very early in life in two British cohorts born 30 years apart. We construct comparable scales using two validated instruments for the measurement of child behaviour and identify two dimensions of socio-emotional skills: ‘internalising’ and ‘externalising’. Using recent methodological advances in factor analysis, we establish comparability in the inequality of these early skills across cohorts, but not in their average level. We document for the first time that inequality in socio-emotional skills has increased across cohorts, especially for boys and at the bottom of the distribution. We also formally decompose the sources of the increase in inequality and find that compositional changes explain half of the rise in inequality in externalising skills. On the other hand, the increase in inequality in internalising skills seems entirely driven by changes in returns to background characteristics. Lastly, we document that socio-emotional skills measured at an earlier age than in most of the existing literature are significant predictors of health and health behaviours. Our results show the importance of formally testing comparability of measurements to study skills differences across groups, and in general point to the role of inequalities in the early years for the accumulation of health and human capital across the life course. North-Holland Pub. Co 2020-11 /pmc/articles/PMC8543077/ /pubmed/34720241 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104171 Text en © 2020 The Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Attanasio, Orazio
Blundell, Richard
Conti, Gabriella
Mason, Giacomo
Inequality in socio-emotional skills: A cross-cohort comparison()
title Inequality in socio-emotional skills: A cross-cohort comparison()
title_full Inequality in socio-emotional skills: A cross-cohort comparison()
title_fullStr Inequality in socio-emotional skills: A cross-cohort comparison()
title_full_unstemmed Inequality in socio-emotional skills: A cross-cohort comparison()
title_short Inequality in socio-emotional skills: A cross-cohort comparison()
title_sort inequality in socio-emotional skills: a cross-cohort comparison()
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8543077/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34720241
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104171
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