• Newsroom
  • World of Labor
  • G²LM|LIC
  • IDSC
  • Login
  • DE
  • About us
    Overview Mission and Vision Organization Initiatives and Projects Awards History
  • Team
    Overview Research Team Service Unit Associated Members Guest Researchers Alumni
  • Network
    Overview Research Fellows Research Affiliates Network Advisory Panel
  • Publications
    Overview Discussion Papers World of Labor Policy Papers Standpunkte Research Reports Research in Labor Economics Books
  • Events
    Overview Events Calendar Research Seminars Conferences and Workshops IZA Summer School
  • Home
  • Publications
  • IZA Discussion Papers
  • The Origins of Cognitive Skills and Non-cognitive Skills: The Long-Term Effect o...

December 2020

IZA DP No. 13960: The Origins of Cognitive Skills and Non-cognitive Skills: The Long-Term Effect of in-Utero Rainfall Shocks in India

Grace Chang, Marta Favara, Rafael Novella

published in: Economics & Human Biology, 2022, 44, 101089

Skills are an important predictor of labour, education, and wellbeing outcomes. Understanding the origins of skills formation is important for reducing future inequalities. This paper analyses the effect of shocks in-utero on human capital outcomes in childhood and adolescence in India. Combining historical rainfall data and longitudinal data from Young Lives, we estimate the effect of rainfall shocks in-utero on cognitive and non-cognitive skills development over the first 15 years of life. We find negative effects of rainfall shocks on receptive vocabulary at age 5, and on mathematics and non-cognitive skills at age 15. Also, shocks occurred after the first trimester are more detrimental for skills development. Our findings support the implementation of policies aiming at reducing inequalities at very early stages in life.

Download

Keywords

  • rainfall shocks
  • in-utero
  • skills formation
  • India

JEL Codes

  • J24
  • I14
Imprint
Privacy Policy
Code of Conduct
Status
© 2025 Deutsche Post STIFTUNG
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.

cb-enable
Dieses Cookie speichert den Status der Cookie-Einwilligung des Benutzers für die aktuelle Domain. Expiry: 1 Year
laravel_session
Session ID um den Nutzer beim Neuladen wiederzuerkennen und seinen Login Status wiederherzustellen. Expiry 2 Hours
XSRF-TOKEN
CSRF-Schutz für Formulare. Expirey: 2 Hours

In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.

ga
Google Analytics
Imprint | Privacy Policy
DE