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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Returns To Skill And Racial Difference In Parenting: Evidence From The Civil Rights Movement, Owen Thompson
The Returns To Skill And Racial Difference In Parenting: Evidence From The Civil Rights Movement, Owen Thompson
Economics Department Working Paper Series
On average, the parental practices adopted by African American parents of young children are much less cognitively stimulating than those of their white counterparts. This paper argues that these differences stem from the low rates of return to human capital historically experienced by African Americans. To study the relationship between the race-specific returns to skill and parenting, I use intergenerational data containing direct measures of parental behaviors, and examine the child rearing practices of mothers who came of age in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, during a period of rapidly increasing returns to skill for African Americans in …
Racial Disparities In The Cognition-Health Relationship, Owen Thompson
Racial Disparities In The Cognition-Health Relationship, Owen Thompson
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This paper investigates how the association between cognitive achievement and self-rated health in middle age differs by race, and attempts to explain these differences. The role of cognition in health determination has received only limited empirical attention, and even less is known about how race may affect this relationship. Using data from the NLSY, I find that while whites with higher cognitive achievement scores tend to report substantially better general health, this relationship is far weaker or wholly absent among blacks. Further tests suggest that about 35% of this racial difference can be explained by behavioral decisions during adulthood, and …