Early and Late Human Capital Investments, Borrowing Constraints, and the Family

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Caucutt, Elizabeth M.; Lochner, Lance
• 署名单位: Western University (University of Western Ontario); National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/704759
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 1065-1147
• 关键词: liquidity constraints; credit constraints; college enrollment; consumption; income; TECHNOLOGY; education; Heterogeneity; uncertainty; insurance

摘要

We develop a dynastic human capital investment framework to study the importance of family borrowing constraints and uninsured labor market risk, as well as the process of intergenerational ability transmission, in determining human capital investments in children at different ages. We calibrate our model to data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. While the effects of relaxing any borrowing limit at a single stage are modest, eliminating all life-cycle borrowing limits dramatically increases investments, earnings, and intergenerational mobility. The impacts of policy changes at college-going ages are greater when anticipated earlier, and shifting subsidies to earlier ages increases aggregate welfare and human capital.