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Via my personal, academic and professional journey, I closely examine my career growth and how my perspectives on early childhood environments developed in reference to free play. Using a narrative format, I share personal experiences that have shaped my views on free play. Free play is a type of play that features choices, freedom of selection, cognitive and social development, and child interest. I review relevant literature and weave in my personal and professional experiences in order to reflect on free play from two different perspectives: participant (child), and the Early Childhood Professional (teacher and/or administrator). I also demonstrate how my professional and academic milestones have contributed to my developing beliefs and ideas put into practice about free play in early childhood environments.
ContributorsAlleyne, Teja Diamond (Author) / Swadener, Beth Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Nagasawa, Mark (Committee member) / Bartlett, Margaret (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This dissertation comprises three chapters.
In chapter one, using a rich dataset for the United States, I estimate a series of models to document the birth order effects on cognitive outcomes, non-cognitive outcomes, and parental investments. I estimate a model that allows for heterogeneous birth order effects by unobservables to examine how birth order effects varies across households. I find that first-born children score 0.2 of a standard deviation higher on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes than their later-born siblings. They also receive 10\% more in parental time, which accounts for more than half of the differences in outcomes. I document that birth order effects vary between 0.1 and 0.4 of a standard deviation across households with the effects being smaller in households with certain characteristics such as a high income.
In chapter two, I build a model of intra-household resource allocation that endogenously generates the decreasing birth order effects in household income with the aim of using the model for counterfactual policy experiments. The model has a life-cycle framework in which a household with two children confronts a sequence of time constraints and a lifetime monetary constraint, and divides the available time and monetary resources between consumption and investment. The counterfactual experiment shows that an annual income transfer of 10,000 USD to low-income households decreases the birth order effects on cognitive and non-cognitive skills by one-sixth, which is five times bigger than the effect in high-income household.
In chapter three, with Francesco Agostinelli and Matthew Wiswall, we examine the relative importance of investments at home and at school during an important transition for many children, entering formal schooling at kindergarten. Moreover, our framework allows for complementarities between children's skills and investments from schools. We find that investments from schools are an important determinant of children's skills at the end of kindergarten, whereas parental investments, although strongly correlated with end-of-kindergarten outcomes, have smaller effects. In addition, we document a negative complementarity between children's skills at kindergarten entry and investments from schools, implying that low-skill children benefit the most from an increase in the quality of schools.
In chapter one, using a rich dataset for the United States, I estimate a series of models to document the birth order effects on cognitive outcomes, non-cognitive outcomes, and parental investments. I estimate a model that allows for heterogeneous birth order effects by unobservables to examine how birth order effects varies across households. I find that first-born children score 0.2 of a standard deviation higher on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes than their later-born siblings. They also receive 10\% more in parental time, which accounts for more than half of the differences in outcomes. I document that birth order effects vary between 0.1 and 0.4 of a standard deviation across households with the effects being smaller in households with certain characteristics such as a high income.
In chapter two, I build a model of intra-household resource allocation that endogenously generates the decreasing birth order effects in household income with the aim of using the model for counterfactual policy experiments. The model has a life-cycle framework in which a household with two children confronts a sequence of time constraints and a lifetime monetary constraint, and divides the available time and monetary resources between consumption and investment. The counterfactual experiment shows that an annual income transfer of 10,000 USD to low-income households decreases the birth order effects on cognitive and non-cognitive skills by one-sixth, which is five times bigger than the effect in high-income household.
In chapter three, with Francesco Agostinelli and Matthew Wiswall, we examine the relative importance of investments at home and at school during an important transition for many children, entering formal schooling at kindergarten. Moreover, our framework allows for complementarities between children's skills and investments from schools. We find that investments from schools are an important determinant of children's skills at the end of kindergarten, whereas parental investments, although strongly correlated with end-of-kindergarten outcomes, have smaller effects. In addition, we document a negative complementarity between children's skills at kindergarten entry and investments from schools, implying that low-skill children benefit the most from an increase in the quality of schools.
ContributorsSaharkhiz, Morteza (Author) / Silverman, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Wiswall, Matthew (Thesis advisor) / Aucejo, Esteban (Committee member) / Veramendi, Gregory (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This dissertation studies the differences in how men and women react to feedback or information about their performance in educational settings and how these differences might impact women’s decisions to stay away from traditionally male-dominated fields. The first chapter analyzes the gender differences in reaction to low performance during high school. I focus on the decision of North Carolina public high school students to enroll in advanced math or English classes after learning about their performance on statewide standardized tests in each subject. I find that women are more responsive to low-performing than men. Women that perform poorly on their tests are less likely than their higher-performance peers to enroll in advanced classes, while men's likelihood is the same regardless of performance. It has been documented that the probability of women continuing their studies in male-dominated fields -- like Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and business -- is more sensitive to their performance in relevant courses at the beginning of college relative to men. The second chapter studies these gender differences in grade sensitivity during college. Using novel survey data, I estimate students' sensitivity to grades and find that women value an extra grade point average (GPA) unit more than men. I find that anticipated discrimination in the labor market of male-dominated fields is important to understand this gender gap in grade sensitivity. I further provide evidence of the gender differences in beliefs about labor market discrimination in different fields. The last chapter investigates the dynamic effects of feedback in an experimental setting. I explore how individuals update their beliefs and choices in response to good or bad news over time in two domains: verbal skills and math. I find significant gender gaps in beliefs and choices before feedback: men are more optimistic about their performance and more willing to compete than women in both domains, but the gaps are significantly larger in math. Feedback significantly shifts individuals' beliefs and choices immediately after receiving it. However, there is substantial persistence of gender gaps over time. This is particularly true among the set of individuals who receive negative feedback.
ContributorsUgalde Araya, Maria Paola (Author) / Aucejo, Esteban (Thesis advisor) / Zafar, Basit (Thesis advisor) / Larroucau, Tomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This dissertation consists of two chapters. The first chapter studies children's skill formation technology while endogenizing the maternal age and child investments. I estimate the effect of a mother's age at childbirth on her child's health, skill level, educational attainment, and adulthood earnings. There is a tradeoff between delaying childbirth to provide a more secure economic environment for mother and child versus the potential negative biological consequences for a child of having an older parent. I quantify this tradeoff. The results indicate that a five-year decrease in the maternal age of educated women, ceteris paribus, results in over 0.50 std increase in the child’s skill level due to an increase in the child’s ability to acquire skills. However, if one adjusts child investment according to individuals’ wage profile conditional on reduced maternal age, the average child’s skill level decreases by 0.07 std. This reduction in children’s skill highlights the impact of lower inputs that children of younger mothers receive. The negative effect of foregone wages may be reduced through policy approaches. My policy analysis indicates implementing a two-year maternity leave policy that freezes mothers’ wages at the level before childbirth would reduce average maternal age at the first birth by about two years, while also increasing the average child’s skill level by about 0.22 std and future earnings by over 6%.
In chapter two, I study the impact of females' perceptions regarding their future fertility behavior on their human capital investments and labor market outcomes. I exploit a natural experiment to study the causal effect of fertility anticipation on individual's investments in human capital. I use the arguably exogenous variation in gender mix of children as an exogenous shock to the probability of further fertility. I document that having two children of the same gender is associated with about 5% lower wages for the mother compared to having two children of the opposite sexes. Mothers with same-sex children perceive themselves as more likely to bear one more child, and so less attached to the labor market, so invest less in human capital, and this is reflected in wages today.
In chapter two, I study the impact of females' perceptions regarding their future fertility behavior on their human capital investments and labor market outcomes. I exploit a natural experiment to study the causal effect of fertility anticipation on individual's investments in human capital. I use the arguably exogenous variation in gender mix of children as an exogenous shock to the probability of further fertility. I document that having two children of the same gender is associated with about 5% lower wages for the mother compared to having two children of the opposite sexes. Mothers with same-sex children perceive themselves as more likely to bear one more child, and so less attached to the labor market, so invest less in human capital, and this is reflected in wages today.
ContributorsEshaghnia, Seyed Mohammad Sadegh (Author) / Zafar, Basit (Thesis advisor) / Aucejo, Esteban (Thesis advisor) / Wiswall, Matthew (Committee member) / Ventura, Gustavo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
The presence of children can influence importantly how households respond to income risk. The aim of this dissertation is to study how different aspects of families' life-cycle decisions are affected by different sources of income fluctuation. In the first part of this dissertation, I study the relationships between fertility choices, consumption, and labor supply, by developing a model with endogenous fertility decisions and income volatility. Within this framework, fertility choices act as a mechanism to smooth utility over time. In this context, I analyze the insurance value of fertility choices. I use a structural model that combines two features underexplored by the literature: children as consumption commitments, and nonseparabilities of family size and consumption. Having children in the household affects consumption and labor marginal utilities, changing the insurance value of fertility decisions and generating incentives to avoid childbearing during low-income spells. I find that the welfare loss of a negative transitory income shock is 34 to 38 times larger if households are not able to choose when to have their children. These results underscore how costly unplanned childbearing can be to the household in terms of welfare.The second part of this dissertation evaluates the impact of being born under negative conditions in the labor market on human capital formation, and what parental behavior could be leading to those effects. I estimate the impact of the unemployment rates on children's assessment outcomes in cognitive and noncognitive skills. Counterintuitively, the results suggest that higher unemployment rates are linked to positive child development outcomes later in childhood. In my main specification, an increase of 1 percentage point in state unemployment causes an increase of 2.5% of a standard deviation in cognitive test scores after controlling for income at birth, hours worked at birth, and other variables.
ContributorsMangini, Marco (Author) / Silverman, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Aucejo, Esteban (Committee member) / Murphy, Alvin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The gig economy is a rapidly growing portion of the US labor landscape. It is appealing to many individuals, as it provides autonomy for workers and opens up increased opportunities for working jobs with desirable schedules. The new California legislation, Assembly Bill 5, is likely to disrupt this sector by increasing costs for employers and removing autonomy from independent contractors with the ABC test that challenges current legal classifications of independent contractors. The ABC test has previously been passed in Massachusetts in 2004 and this paper aims to determine how the test has impacted the Massachusetts self-employment sector. A difference-in-differences estimation and linear regression model were analyzed to accurately determine the impact. A minimal negative correlation was found between the introduction of the ABC test in Massachusetts and the proportion of self-employed individuals in Massachusetts post-treatment. It was also found that the percentage change of average wages for self-employed individuals sharply increased in the first year directly following the implementation of the ABC test in Massachusetts and then decreased in the next year. The regression showed little correlation between the ABC test and self-employment in Massachusetts, as the p-value was not significant at the 5% level for the difference-in-differences interaction term, possibly due to limitations of the model.
ContributorsRao, Veena Yarlagadda (Author) / Aucejo, Esteban (Thesis director) / Shields, David (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This dissertation explores the effect of school competition on the human capital accumulation of students. Policies that expand the scope for school choice have become increasingly popular largely due to the belief that this will create incentives for low-performing, incumbent schools to improve academic outcomes. However, there is a general lack of empirical support for these positive academic spillover effects in most contexts. In the first chapter, I demonstrate that if schools respond to competition through channels not typically considered in standard arguments in favor of school choice, it means that these policies may lead to negative, unintended consequences for academic achievement. I find that increasing the number of schools serving a given market can have a negative effect on test scores through creating incentives for schools to increase the provision of non-academic services that do not contribute to academic preparation, and through the creation of excess costs in the public school system. I use an empirical strategy designed to address strategic location decisions by new entrants as well as student selection across schools to show that entry of a new charter middle school during a recent large-scale charter expansion in North Carolina decreased average traditional public middle school test scores across a school district.
The second chapter considers the extent to which policymakers have tools available to them that can improve the ability of competition to generate the increases in test scores at incumbent schools that they have prioritized. I show that the efficacy of school choice can be improved by providing short-term, partial reimbursements to public school districts for increases in charter school enrollment by resident pupils. I also demonstrate that these effects occur not only due to the direct increase in district revenue associated with reimbursements, but also because the presence of this aid reduces the incentives of school administrators to compete for students through non-academic channels. The empirical strategy that I use to generate these results leverages plausibly exogenous cutoffs for aid eligibility induced by a unique policy in the state of New York.
ContributorsTobin, Zachary Benjamin (Author) / Aucejo, Esteban (Thesis advisor) / Silverman, Daniel (Committee member) / Murphy, Alvin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Using a dataset of ASU students from the 2016-2017 cohort, we interact gender and parent education level to observe gaps in academic achievement. We see a statistically insignificant achievement gap for males across parent education level, but a statistically significant achievement gap for females across parent education level. We also observe dropout gaps among these interaction groups. We see the widest dropout gap being between males across parent education level, with the smallest dropout gap being between females across parent education level. So with males we see an insignificant achievement gap but the widest dropout gap across parent education level, and with females we see a significant achievement gap but the smallest dropout gap across parent education level. What is driving these gaps and causing more similarly performing students to drop out at wider rates? At the aggregate level, we see larger gaps in grade- associated dropout probability across parent education level for males which may be able to explain the larger difference in overall proportions of dropouts between males. However, when predicting dropout probability of the semester with the most first generation and non-first generation dropouts, we see that females have the largest differences across parent education level in grade-associated dropout probability. This suggests that our model may be best suited in using college achievement data to predict overall dropout probabilities, not next-semester dropout probabilities using current semester data. Our findings also suggest that first generation students’ dropout probability is more sensitive to the grades they receive than non-first generation students.
ContributorsHartman, Ryan (Author) / Aucejo, Esteban (Thesis director) / Larroucau, Tomas (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
A growing body of research suggests that there is more to course assessment than homework scores and test performance. This paper contributes to the empirical literature in economics and education by evaluating the impact of racial and gender congruency on the performance of ASU students. Expanding on previous research which only covered elementary and high school, we are able to draw conclusions and policy recommendations to solve the racial achievement gap in the USA.
ContributorsAlmeida, Alexander (Author) / Aucejo, Esteban (Thesis director) / Larroucau, Tomas (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
Background: It is estimated that 50% of all mental illness arises prior to age 14, an incident attributed in part to disruptions and imbalances within the family system. Equine assisted learning is a complementary and alternative approach to family therapy which is being used increasingly to promote mental health in both adults and children. This study sought to build and deliver an evidence-based, family-centered equine assisted learning program aimed at promoting family function, family satisfaction and child social-emotional competence, and to measure its acceptability and preliminary effect.
Method: Twenty families with children 10 years and older were recruited to participate in a 3-week equine assisted learning program at a therapeutic riding center in Phoenix, Arizona. Sessions included groundwork activities with horses used to promote life skills using experiential learning theory. The study design included a mixed-method quasi-experimental one-group pretest posttest design using the following mental health instruments: Devereaux Student Strengths Assessment, Brief Family Assessment Measure (3 dimensions), and Family Satisfaction Scale to measure child social-emotional competence, family function, and family satisfaction, respectively. Acceptability was determined using a Likert-type questionnaire with open-ended questions to gain a qualitative thematic perspective of the experience.
Results: Preliminary pretest and posttest comparisons were statistically significant for improvements in family satisfaction (p = 0.001, M = -5.84, SD = 5.63), all three domains of family function (General Scale: p = 0.005, M = 6.84, SD = 9.20; Self-Rating Scale: p = 0.050, M = 6.53, SD = 12.89; and Dyadic Relationship Scale: p = 0.028, M = 3.47, SD = 7.18), and child social-emotional competence (p = 0.015, M = -4.05, SD 5.95). Effect sizes were moderate to large (d > 0.5) for all but one instrument (Self-Rating Scale), suggesting a considerable magnitude of change over the three-week period. The intervention was highly accepted among both children and adults. Themes of proximity, self-discovery, and regard for others emerged during evaluation of qualitative findings. Longitudinal comparisons of baseline and 3-month follow-up remain in-progress, a topic available for future discussion.
Discussion: Results help to validate equine assisted learning as a valuable tool in the promotion of child social-emotional intelligence strengthened in part by the promotion of family function and family satisfaction. For mental health professionals, these results serve as a reminder of the alternatives that are available, as well as the importance of partnerships within the community. For therapeutic riding centers, these results help equine professionals validate their programs and gain a foothold within the scientific community. Additionally, they invite future riding centers to follow course in incorporating evidence into their programs and examining new directions for growth within the mental health community.
Method: Twenty families with children 10 years and older were recruited to participate in a 3-week equine assisted learning program at a therapeutic riding center in Phoenix, Arizona. Sessions included groundwork activities with horses used to promote life skills using experiential learning theory. The study design included a mixed-method quasi-experimental one-group pretest posttest design using the following mental health instruments: Devereaux Student Strengths Assessment, Brief Family Assessment Measure (3 dimensions), and Family Satisfaction Scale to measure child social-emotional competence, family function, and family satisfaction, respectively. Acceptability was determined using a Likert-type questionnaire with open-ended questions to gain a qualitative thematic perspective of the experience.
Results: Preliminary pretest and posttest comparisons were statistically significant for improvements in family satisfaction (p = 0.001, M = -5.84, SD = 5.63), all three domains of family function (General Scale: p = 0.005, M = 6.84, SD = 9.20; Self-Rating Scale: p = 0.050, M = 6.53, SD = 12.89; and Dyadic Relationship Scale: p = 0.028, M = 3.47, SD = 7.18), and child social-emotional competence (p = 0.015, M = -4.05, SD 5.95). Effect sizes were moderate to large (d > 0.5) for all but one instrument (Self-Rating Scale), suggesting a considerable magnitude of change over the three-week period. The intervention was highly accepted among both children and adults. Themes of proximity, self-discovery, and regard for others emerged during evaluation of qualitative findings. Longitudinal comparisons of baseline and 3-month follow-up remain in-progress, a topic available for future discussion.
Discussion: Results help to validate equine assisted learning as a valuable tool in the promotion of child social-emotional intelligence strengthened in part by the promotion of family function and family satisfaction. For mental health professionals, these results serve as a reminder of the alternatives that are available, as well as the importance of partnerships within the community. For therapeutic riding centers, these results help equine professionals validate their programs and gain a foothold within the scientific community. Additionally, they invite future riding centers to follow course in incorporating evidence into their programs and examining new directions for growth within the mental health community.
ContributorsSolarz, Allison (Author) / Chen, Angela (Thesis advisor)
Created2019-05-02