Efffects of Child Maturation and Home and Neighborhood Environments on Child Development

We model the relationship over time between multiple good and bad inputs from home and neighborhood environments to the child development production process and the multiple good and bad outcomes which it involves. Using time-demeaned data from a balanced panel of 253 families  drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Sample for 1994 through 2000, we estimate an output-oriented directional distance function which simultaneously relates good and bad inputs from home and neighborhood environments to good and bad outcomes, measured as children's math and reading abilities and parent-reported behavior problems.  We also measure productivity growth, technical change, technical efficiency, and efficiency change.  Children's productivity growth is highest at age 5 years and diminishes thereafter.  Finally, we investigate the effects on these estimates of choice of alternative direction vectors for the good and the bad outcomes.  We find that the quality of a child's home environment contributes as much to child development as does biological maturation.  The quality of the child's neighborhood environment, as perceived by the child's mother, exercises substantially less leverage than does the home environment.