Ppvt Score Essay

5.3 Cognitive skills

Pooled, Fixed Effects and IV results for Math and PPVT scores

PPVT scores

For the pooled OLS we find that number of hours spent playing, in school and studying are highly significant. One hour of play increases on average the percentile rank of the PPVT score by 3.24, whereas for one extra hour spent studying the per- centile rank on average increases by 3.75, and finally for one extra hour of school the percentile rank increases by 3.59. For parental values only parental value for obedience is slightly positively significant that is at 10% significance level.

We do know that the pooled OLS estimates might not be accurate as we haven’t accounted for unobserved heterogeneity which might be because of some unobserved family, parental and community characteristics and differences. This therefore moti- vates us to conduct a first difference. We observe that number of hours spent playing and studying are still significant. Therefore one extra hour of play and study on aver- age increases the

Number of hours spent playing is also slightly significant, where one extra of play increases on average the percentile rank by 2.30. Furthermore Parental Value for tolerance is positively significant and parental value for independence is slightly negatively significant.

As mentioned earlier, pooled OLS due to unobserved heterogeneities is unable to give complete accurate results. Therefore after accounting for unobserved hetero- geneities through First Difference, time use variable for play becomes highly signifi- cant and its coefficient also increases in magnitude. Therefore one extra hour that a child spends on playing the percentile rank on average increases by 2.30. The time use variable for study is not significant however at a p-value of 0.101