The two arms of my dissertation research are on bringing the role of neighborhood peers and cohort exposure into the school context and investigating gender gaps in noncognitive skills. Both projects are united in expanding our understanding of human capital. Much of the research in the economics of education focuses on the efficacy of specific policies, which is valuable in its own right. However, my research looks upstream of existing policy frameworks to better understand human capital accumulation at a more fundamental level. Through this approach, my dissertation research helps devise new frameworks and tools that not only build upon our current successes but also expand the bounds of what we think is possible.In my first chapter, In the School, Down the Block: Achievement Effects of Peers in the School, Neighborhood, and Cohort, I estimate the effect of mean peer ability on students? test scores using data on all Michigan public school students over thirteen years. I consider peers in the same cohort at school?as well as peers in adjacent cohorts, and peers living on the same block. I contribute two novel findings to the literature. First, school peer effects are much stronger than block effects. For peers in the same cohort, the school effect is 10 times larger. Second, cohort membership plays a substantial role in determining peer influence in schools but not in neighborhoods. For students in the same school, the adjacent-cohort peer effect is 40-80% smaller than the same-cohort effect. Meanwhile, for students living on the same block, peer effects are similar, regardless of cohort. These results are robust to a regression discontinuity design focusing on students near the birthdate cutoff for entry into kindergarten. I also find evidence that peers in the older cohort matter more than peers in the younger cohort, particularly in the school context, suggesting that relative age also plays a role in determining peer influence.My second and third chapters, Equalizing Inputs, Enduring Gaps: Examining Changes in Levels and Correlates of Gender Gaps in Noncognitive Skills Over Time and Raising Boys, Raising Girls: Modeling Gender Differences in the Process of Early Childhood Skill Formation, approach the issue of gender gaps in noncognitive skills with two alternative analytic frameworks. In both papers, I leverage the smaller but more in-depth ECLS-K datasets to combine information on teacher-reported noncognitive skills in elementary school with background characteristics and extensive data on parental education activities. The second chapter, Equalizing Inputs, Enduring Gaps: Examining Changes in Levels and Correlates of Gender Gaps in Noncognitive Skills Over Time, takes a more descriptive and correlative approach by examining changes over time in boy-girl gender gaps between the two waves of the ECLS-K survey, finding that gender gaps in noncognitive skills remain large and persistent between the 1998-1999 and 2010-2011 nationally representative kindergarten cohorts. Additionally, I use factor analysis and Oaxaca- Blinder decomposition to examine changes in observable inputs to noncognitive skills over time and find that changes in these inputs would predict a narrowing of gender gaps between the two cohorts, despite no such change occurring.℗ My third chapter, Raising Boys, Raising Girls: Modeling Gender Differences in the Dynamic Process of Early Childhood Skill Formation, uses a more structural approach on the same datasets to attempt to provide an answer to the mystery raised in the first: if our usual predictors do not appear valid, what causes gender gaps in noncognitive skills? Differences in inputs? Or differences in production functions? Specifically, I apply the Technology of Skill Formation model proposed by Cunha and Heckman (2008) that takes a Markov chain approach and incorporates both cognitive and noncognitive skills to estimate parameters of skill investment over time. This approach leverages the panel structure of the ECLS-K datasets as well as the availability of both cognitive and noncognitive skill measures. Results are inconclusive, as correctly measuring and determining meaningful parental inputs in the investment process is tricky. I test the robustness of the Cunha and Heckman (2008) model to modeling assumptions and measurement of parental inputs, and find 1) the value-added model sufficiently captures the process of skill formation, relative to the cumulative model of Todd and Wolpin (2003), and 2) parental investment as captured by the measures available in the ECLS-K do not have a statistically detectable impact on the formation of noncognitive skills, regardless of the specification used.
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