Hello everyone,
Hope you’re doing well. I’m trying to explore whether the level of human capital investment (e.g. educational expenses) is lower for disabled children in comparison to their siblings. At this point, I’m hoping to get suggestions on how to specify a model that would allow me to restrict the analysis at the intra-household level and between siblings. What I’m thinking so far (using a linear or Poisson specification) and restricting the sample to siblings only:
Edu_expenses ~ f(disabled (yes=1/no=1); severity of disability; demographic indicators; socioeconomic proxies; household fixed effects; location dummies)
Will this suffice in achieving my objectives?
Thanks in advance for your suggestions!
Best, Wameq
1. You need to run a panel regression. Each family is a panel. Since you mentioned HH fixed effects, I think you are aware of that.
2. Poisson is an arrival rate distribution (yes-no), does not make sense in this context, although you could try a mlogit or hazard rate regression on number of years of school attended. Since expenses have a long-tailed range, you probably will want a log-linear model. Rather than OLS, most likely run a generalized linear model, possibly experimenting with a gamma link. Especially if your severely disabled often have no educational expenses, consider a 2-stage model based on Manning, W. G., Basu, A., & Mullahy, J. (2005). Generalized modeling
approaches to risk adjustment of skewed outcomes data. Journal
of Health Economics, 24, 465–488. doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.
2004.09.011
3. You need a variable to control for birth order (i.e., first child, second child, etc). In that count, exclude children who died before they were school age. So e.g., first child surviving to age 5.
4. I would probably exclude families with a multiple birth.
5. Sex of child obviously is a critical variable and I am assuming all the data come from one country.
6. How will you handle government vs private expenditure, compulsory education rules. (obviously not an issue in some countries) [Extreme example: in the US, severely disabled all are sent to school as the school essentially provides custodial day care or a pupil personnel worker who comes to the home.]
7. If you are collecting data prospectively, use the WHOqol-BREF with the parents. Get a parental assessment of the child's functional capacity using the Health Utility Index-3, the PEDSqol ,or one of the new generation of similar instruments.
8. If you wish to chat further, I'm in the DC suburbs, [email protected]
Hi Ted R Miller ,
Thank you so much for such a detailed answer, this is incredibly helpful! To elaborate, I am planning to use the Household, Income and Expenditure Survey from Bangladesh.
Responding to your points:
1. This is a great tip, I haven't thought about it like this, thank you!
2. Great tip, will keep that in mind.
3. Will do
4 and 5. Absolutely
6. While is some mandatory requirement from the government, it's not the most adhered to, so we might be safe there in making some strong assumptions about private investment
7.Another great tip, thanks!
Overall, thank you so much! I'll definitely be in touch via email to get further suggestions/feedback as I start to work on this.
Best, Wameq
Ted has the right answer, as always!
Poisson is certainly not an option here.
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