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osu1221754167.pdf (495.66 KB)
ETD Abstract Container
Abstract Header
Three Essays On Children's Skill Acquisition And Academic Performance
Author Info
Bhattacharya, Samrat
Permalink:
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1221754167
Abstract Details
Year and Degree
2008, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Economics.
Abstract
My dissertation consists of three essays on children's skill acquisition and academic achievement. In all the essays, I use data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) and the supplemental Child Survey (NLSY-CHILD). In the first essay, I ask whether family structure causally affects the cognitive test scores and behavioral problems of children. I use multiple observations on each child to estimate a first-difference model and net out the effect of child- and parent-specific time-invariant unobservable factors that are correlated with both the test scores and family structure. I find no improvement in mathematics and reading test scores when mother (re)marries. There is also no decrease in these test scores when a child moved from a two biological parent to a single mother household. However, the results for the behavioral problems suggest that there might be some benefit, in terms of lower behavioral problems, of having a father in the household. In the second essay, I analyze whether delaying entry into kindergarten by an academic year helps to improve the academic performance of the delayed entrants. Every year a large number of parents hold their children out of kindergarten for an academic year although they meet the state kindergarten entry cut-offs (popularly known as "red-shirting"). I use a propensity score matching estimation (PSM) technique to estimate the effect of delaying entry into kindergarten for the delayed entrants by comparing test scores of "matched" delayed and non-delayed entrants. I find that delaying entry into kindergarten has a small but statistically significant negative effect on the reading and mathematics test scores of delayed entrants. In the third essay, I ask whether repeating a grade improves the performance of repeaters in mathematics and reading tests. I use a variant of PSM, where PSM is combined with a difference-in-difference estimator, to estimate the effect of repeating a grade for the repeaters. I find that repeating a grade actually lowers the performance on reading and mathematics tests for the repeaters, compared with how they would have performed if they had not repeated a grade.
Committee
Audrey Light, PhD (Advisor)
Pages
167 p.
Subject Headings
Economics
Keywords
Family Structure
;
Single Mother
;
Test Scores
;
Behavioral Problems
;
Kindergarten Entry
;
Delayed Entrants
;
Propensity Score Matching
;
Grade Retention
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Citations
Bhattacharya, S. (2008).
Three Essays On Children's Skill Acquisition And Academic Performance
[Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1221754167
APA Style (7th edition)
Bhattacharya, Samrat.
Three Essays On Children's Skill Acquisition And Academic Performance.
2008. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation.
OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center
, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1221754167.
MLA Style (8th edition)
Bhattacharya, Samrat. "Three Essays On Children's Skill Acquisition And Academic Performance." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1221754167
Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)
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Document number:
osu1221754167
Download Count:
1,053
Copyright Info
© 2008, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.