Testing the Impact of Non-cognitive Skills on Children’s Future Success

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A recent trend in the literature on child development and predictive indicators of future life success involves the study of non-cognitive skills. Non-cognitive skills refer to a broad category of personal characteristics such as efficiency, trustworthiness, perseverance, self-esteem, and optimism. Until recently, research on human capital failed to take the formative role of non-cognitive skills into consideration. New research on child development has observed a strong correlation between the cultivation of children’s non-cognitive skills and their future employment rates, levels of higher education, and feelings of self-efficacy over time.

Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan test whether the opposite relationship exists when we look at negative shocks to non-cognitive skills. That is to say, do negative shocks to children’s non-cognitive skills decrease their chances of success? In studying the impact of a universal childcare program in Quebec, they find that shocks to the development of children’s non-cognitive skills lead to worse overall health, higher crime participation rates, and lower life satisfaction in the long run.

In order to examine the strength of the causal relationship between the deterioration of non-cognitive skills and later-life success, Baker et al. use the universal childcare program (UCCP), introduced in Quebec in 1997, as their case study. The program subsidized childcare centers and provided all parents—regardless of their employment status—with access to affordable childcare facilities. As a result, maternal labor supply and child enrollment in daycare centers increased rapidly. Baker et al. reproduced this expansive study, which has demonstrated a negative relationship between enrollment in the preschool program and the non-cognitive development of participating students. Common manifestations of deteriorating non-cognitive skills can include hyperactivity, inattention, physical aggression, and decreased motor social development scores.

The exact cause of the negative impact of UCCP on non-cognitive skills is not precisely clear. Previous research suggests that the negative shock to non-cognitive skills could have been caused by moving children who had previously been receiving high-quality parental education at home to a childcare setting with a larger adult-to-child ratio. Another possible explanation is associated with the fact that more mothers went back to work after the introduction of universal childcare. If working mothers are more stressed than non-working mothers, this could negatively impact non-cognitive skill development at home.

The authors also find that, while UCCP was associated with a negative impact on non-cognitive skills, cognitive skills were unaffected. Since there was not a statistically significant relationship between enrollment in UCCP and children’s cognitive abilities, the model allowed the researchers to focus on examining the correlation between deteriorating, non-cognitive skills and lower life performance, while holding cognitive skills constant. The researchers also controlled for province, year, gender, child’s age, mother’s age and education level, the number of siblings, urban status, and parental immigrant status or ethnicity. These controls helped produce reliable estimates of the effect of UCCP on children’s later-life outcomes.

Baker et al. examine three key indicators—cognitive development, crime, and health and life satisfaction—across various age groups to assess the outcomes for children exposed to UCCP. The findings reveal a positive correlation between exposure to UCCP and rates of participation in crime: longer exposure to the program consistently leads to higher rates of participation in crime. Exposure to UCCP is also related to lower quality of health and lower self-reported life satisfaction.

Interestingly, the program seems to have different impacts on non-cognitive skills across gender. For males, the impact of UCCP translates to an increase in aggressive behavior. For females, the negative impact of the program emerges through decreased levels of pro-social behavior, such as altruism. This disparity is consistent with the data that indicate a statistically significant increase in crime participation rates among male participants.

It is important to note that correlation does not imply causation—the children who grew up to commit crimes after being involved in UCCP may have had other factors influencing their behaviors. Though the authors attempt to control for as many of these factors as possible, other unseen variables could still be influencing the relationship between early-life, non-cognitive skills and later-life crime. Regardless, the suggestion of a causal relationship between a shock to non-cognitive skills and higher crime rates is arguably the most troubling finding of the study.

The results of this working paper are significant for early childcare policymakers. Whether the results of the case study are particular to Quebec still needs to be explored. Nevertheless, if the long-term success of future generations is contingent upon the development of their non-cognitive skills, then the evaluation of any childcare program should emphasize the importance of these non-cognitive skills.

Article Source: Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan, “Non-Cognitive Deficits and Young Adult Outcomes: The Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program,” National Bureau of Economic Research, 2015.

Feature Photo: cc/(Robert DeGennaro)

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