2013-06-16 papers

on Neuroeconomics

Issue of 2013‒06‒16
two papers chosen by

Impacts of parental health shocks on children's non-cognitive skills By Westermaier, Franz; Morefield, Brant; Mühlenweg, Andrea M.
Can video games affect children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills? By Agne Suziedelyte

Impacts of parental health shocks on children's non-cognitive skills

By:	Westermaier, Franz; Morefield, Brant; Mühlenweg, Andrea M.
Abstract:	We examine how parental health shocks affect children's non-cognitive skills. Based on a German mother-and-child data base, we draw on significant changes in selfreported parental health as an exogenous source of health variation to identify effects on outcomes for children at ages of three and six years. At the age of six, we observe that maternal health shocks in the previous three years have significant negative effects on children's behavioral outcomes. The most serious of these maternal health shocks decrease the observed non-cognitive skills up to half a standard deviation. Paternal health does not robustly affect non-cognitive outcomes. --
Keywords:	Human capital,health,non-cognitive skills
JEL:	I00 J24 I10
Date:	2013
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:13032&r=neu

Can video games affect children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills?

By:	Agne Suziedelyte (The University of New South Wales)
Abstract:	The aim of this paper is to investigate whether there is a causal relationship between video game playing and children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills. According to the literature, video games have a potential to improve children's cognitive abilities. Video games may also positively aect such non-cognitive skills as the ability to sustain attention and pro-social behavior. On the other hand, there are concerns that video games can teach children to behave aggressively. The Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics is used for the analysis. The key advantages of this data set are its panel nature, which allows addressing the endogeneity of video game playing, and the time diary component, which provides a reliable measure of children's video game time. I nd that video game playing has a positive statistically signicant eect on some of the cognitive skills. More specically, an increase in video game time is found to improve children's ability to solve problems. There is no statistically signicant effect of video game playing on children's reading skills, once other variables are held fixed. The findings of this study support the hypothesis that video game playing may improve certain non-cognitive skills. Moreover, there is no evidence that video game playing increases aggressiveness in children.
Keywords:	cognitive and non-cognitive skills; human capital; video game playing; time use; children
JEL:	D13 J13 J24
Date:	2012–09
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:swe:wpaper:2012-37&r=neu

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