The psychological effects of poverty on investments in children's human capital

Arbeitspapier

Do poor parents respond inefficiently to future returns on investments, even when they would have the financial means to invest optimally? Combining multiple experiments, we document that when parents of high-school students in Brazil are offered the opportunity to invest in an educational program, (1) prior experience with the program closes the gap in willingness to invest between high- and low-SES parents, but (2) financial worries reopen that gap. We show that financial worries lead parents to respond to small but immediate returns as if they were large, and to large but future returns as if they were small.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Working Paper ; No. 349

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Field Experiments ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡ ; Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity ; Education and Economic Development ; Returns to Education
• Thema: Psychology of poverty ; attention misallocation

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Lichand, Guilherme ; Bettinger, Eric ; Cunha, Nina Menezes ; Madeira, Ricardo
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): University of Zurich, Department of Economics
• (wo): Zurich
• (wann): 2021

Weitere Informationen

• DOI: doi:10.5167/uzh-189746
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/234029
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ