Skill Formation and the Trouble with Child Non-Cognitive Skill Measures

This paper develops a framework to address issues of contamination in parent reported measures of child non-cognitive skills. We estimate a dynamic model in which child and parental skills evolve jointly and leverage information provided by teachers and interviewers to deal with contamination of parent-reported measures. The model also allows us to examine the relative importance of mothers and fathers in the evolution of child skills. Our findings reveal that ignoring contamination significantly underestimates the role of maternal non-cognitive skills in the evolution of child non-cognitive skills. Additionally, we find evidence of stronger feedback effects from child skills to mothers than fathers. Simulation exercises demonstrate how contamination can distort evaluations of early childhood policies, underscoring the importance of robust measurement approaches.