Essays on Human Capital Development and Socio-economic Inequality

This dissertation consists of three chapters in which I address central research questions about the role of parental investments and family structure on human capital development, the impact of education on labour-market outcomes and learning outcomes, and the origins and mechanisms of inter-generational mobility in developing countries. The first chapter examines how parental monetary investment affects the joint evolution of child health, cognitive skills and socio-emotional skills. I estimate a dynamic factor model, characterizing the skill formation process over the childhood, from birth to 12 years of age, using the sample of Vietnamese children from the Young Lives study. In the second chapter, I estimate marginal returns to upper secondary school on the labour market and on learning outcomes in Indonesia. Using the longitudinal data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey 1997-2015, I document a substantial degree of heterogeneity in the returns to upper secondary school on the labour market. The third chapter investigates the origins and mechanisms of birth order effects on cognitive skills, socio-emotional skills and health in Vietnam. Using a sample of children from the Young Lives study we find strong evidence of negative birth order effects on parental investments and child capabilities, emerging very early in life.