Parental and public investment in children and adolescents

Education is the basic requirement for human development. With education, employment opportunities are broadened and income levels are increased. Despite of governmental efforts, huge investment and many innovative programmes, the school dropout remains alarming high in many states of India. In this context, it is not only the provision of schooling facilities and quality of education, but also other household and social factors play a major role in influencing the discontinuation of education. NFHS -3 provides an opportunity to examine the school dropout, based on large nationally representative sample survey of households in Indian context. The present paper tried to understand the differentials in school dropouts for selected states and at national level. Based on the data from NFHS-3, it was found that only 75 percent of the children in the age group 6 to 16 years are currently attending school. About 14% of the children never attended the school and 11 percent dropped out of school for various reasons. The study suggests that unless and until there is considerable improvement in the economic status of households and change in the social attitudes of parents, achieving the goal of universalisation of school education will remain a major challenge for India.

This paper evaluates the impact of a prenatal nutritional program on child health at birth in one of the Canadian provinces, Québec. The objective of the OLO ("oeuf-lait-orange") program is to reduce the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight by providing nutritional supplements to pregnant women in situations of poverty. We exploit the historical and geospatial progressive implementation of the program throughout the province between 1985 and 2005 to identify the causal impact of the program on infant health. Our preliminary results suggest a positive effect of the OLO program on birth weight. Since birth weight is associated with a number of adulthood outcomes such as educational attainment, the evaluation of this program contributes to the debates on which policies should be implemented in order to reduce socioeconomic inequalities.

Objective
1. To examine the association of parental characteristics and young people education attainment in selected states.
2. To examine the association of parental characteristics and young people occupational status in selected status.
3. To examine the relationship of parental education, household wealth and siblings on schooling of young people.
Data source and Methodology.
This study used the data of Youth in India: Situations and Needs study conducted in 2006-2007 in six states of India, namely Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu. Bivariate analysis ,Mean, correlation between parents characteristics with child characteristics and OLS regression used.
Results: Bivariate analysis shows significant relationship between father’s occupations with children occupation.
Conclusion:
This study explore the relationship between parental characteristics with children education and occupation. Find suggest that those father socio-economic condition is high among their children education and occupation status also high. Spatial differences found in context of education and occupation in Tamil Nadu mean years of schooling high comparison to others states. Bihar and Jharkhand is back ward to the provided occupation and employment among youth compared to other states.

Despite the wide provision of maternity leave, research on the direct impacts of maternity leave legislation on children’s early and long term outcomes has been relatively scarce. While the small but recently growing literature on this mostly studies Canada and Scandinavian countries, this paper is among the first to analyze the effects of maternity leave expansions on early childhood and later outcomes in China.
Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey and the Chinese Censuses, the paper evaluates the effects on children's education and health outcomes of a policy reform in China that increased maternity leave from 56 to 90 days in September 1988 (in addition to the national expansion, provinces offered extra leave to women having a late birth or with one child only). The empirical analysis employs both a difference-in-differences design, which exploits the variation in leave expansions across provinces and different groups of women, and a regression discontinuity design, which compares children born around the cutoff point when the policy took effect. Positive effects of the leave expansion on childhood and adolescent development are expected to be found. The findings offer new insight into the impacts of maternity leave from a country with different maternity leave and child care institutions.

Compulsory education policy has been widely used by economists to estimate the causal impacts of education on various outcomes. However, few have investigated the spillover effects of compulsory education on children’s siblings within a family. Using a regression discontinuity method and Hong Kong Census Data, I found that Hong Kong’s 1971 policy on free, compulsory primary education reduced the probability of early dropout by approximately 8% by age 12. The effect is substantial considering that approximately 90% of primary-school-age children were already in school in Hong Kong when the policy was implemented. The 1971 policy also reduced the probability of early dropout for the oldest brother (a 3% reduction in the dropout rate by age 12) and the oldest sister (a 5% reduction by age 12 and a 4% reduction by age 15). The impacts were larger for children in low-income families. Further, having younger brothers who benefited from free compulsory primary education did not seem to affect the oldest child’s educational attainment. However, having younger sisters who benefited from the compulsory education policy increased the educational attainment for the oldest child in the family, especially for the oldest sister.

When should birthparents and government start investing on children’s education in the Philippines? is the main question that this paper seeks to answer. Secondly, this paper provides blueprints on how to communicate the scientific findings to small neighborhood. This paper presents general statements derived from a constellation of scientific findings from legitimate science institutions that can be used in developing communication strategies for the Early Childhood Care and Education program in the smallest political unit or the “barangay” in 4th/5th class municipalities where poverty is widespread in the Philippines. In general, universal access to education is the joint responsibility of the three social institutions such as the family, school and the government.

Information on research methods, data and analysis are encapsulated in the extended abstract.