Three essays on families, children and human capital formation

There is a consensus in economic literature that early-life experiences have lasting effects on later in life human capability formation. However, less is known about how families respond to shocks in childhood. My dissertation investigates the interactions between family investments, early-life shocks and human capital among children. Understanding the role of the family has important implications for the design of social interventions that attempt to remediate adverse early childhood environments. Three separate papers form the analytical centerpiece of my dissertation.;In the first essay, I investigate the persistent effect of negative shocks early in life on children's health and cognitive outcomes, and explore whether shocks at certain periods matter more than others. It exploits the geographic intensity of extreme floods during the 1997-1998 El Nino phenomenon in Ecuador as a source of exogenous variation in children's exposure to negative conditions at different periods early in life. In addition, this essay explores potential mechanisms by studying how exposure to the El Nino shock affected key inputs to the production of children's human capital: birth weight and family inputs. This paper highlights relevant implications for developing policies that improve the coping mechanisms against negative shocks that affect both income, and parental stress and health. Those policies should target disadvantaged families with children and pregnant women not just before giving birth, but also early in pregnancy to prevent the negative consequences on children's development.;In the second essay, I consider how U.S. families choose to invest in response to the onset of a health condition in a child. Family investments can reinforce, or compensate for the occurrence of a health-limiting condition. The results from this paper shed light on the importance of incorporating the family unit as part of public policies that involve children with serious health conditions.;In the last essay, my coauthors and I investigate the channels (e.g. maternal investments and children's skills) through which an early childhood intervention operates to boost later outcomes. We use data from the Nurse Family Partnership, an influential nurse visiting intervention program in the U.S. that targets disadvantaged mothers, combining prenatal care, parenting education and family planning components. This paper contributes to a better understanding of, and improvement in, early childhood policies.