The origins of cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills: The long-term effect of in-utero rainfall shocks in India

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, published in Economics and Human Biology, analyses the effect of shocks in-utero on human capital outcomes in childhood and adolescence in India. By combining historical rainfall data and longitudinal data from Young Lives, the authors estimate the effect of rainfall shocks in-utero on cognitive and non-cognitive skills development over the first 15 years of life.

They find negative effects of rainfall shocks on receptive vocabulary at age 5, and on mathematics and non-cognitive skills at age 15. The negative effects on cognitive skills are driven by boys, while the effect for both cognitive and non-cognitive skills are driven by children of parents with lower education, suggesting that prenatal shocks might exacerbate pre-existing inequalities. Our findings support the implementation of policies aiming at reducing inequalities at very early stages in life.

The authors highlight the following:

• Understanding the origins of skills formation is important for reducing future inequalities in life course outcomes.

• We estimate the effect of rainfall shocks in-utero on skills development over the first 15 years of life.

• Rainfall shocks negatively affect receptive vocabulary at age 5, and mathematics and non-cognitive skills at age 15.

• Boys drive the negative effects on cognitive skills, and children of parents with lower education are more affected.

You can read the full article here.