This thesis is a collection of essays on the process of accumulation of health and nutrition, cognitive and non-cognitive skills over early stages of the life cycle in less developed coun- try contexts. The first essay assesses the effects of early-life exposure to armed conflict on human capital. The analysis exploits the availability of a unique dataset that permits us to trace the intensity of the Peru 1980-2000 armed-conflict across regions and over time at the monthly frequency. This allows the implementation of several econometric strate- gies to convincingly identify the effect of the conflict on infant mortality and nutritional status, finding very large effects for the latter outcome. The second essay contributes to the debate on the origins of skills by making the point that early nutritional investments are likely to be one of the main drivers of non-cognitive· skills formation, building on findings from the early childhood development literature. Empirical evidence support- ing this notion is presented using longitudinal data from four developing countries. The third essay looks at the early-life impact of temperature variation on the formation of human capabilities of a sample of children growing up in the Peruvian highlands, an area where cold events such as frosts are widespread. The analysis provides evidence that early-life temperature levels below long-term averages translate into lower cognitive and non-cognitive scores at later ages. The results corroborate the importance of early investments while at the same time offer a first quantification of the consequences of climatic variation in the Andean highlands.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:553064 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Jiminez, Alan N. Sanchez |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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