Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A small but growing body of research suggests a potentially important role of early life health in shaping educational and socioeconomic attainments in adulthood. In most respects these findings are consistent with a large and long standing literature documenting the deleterious long-term developmental outcomes of low birth weight and poor infant/child health. However, very little is known about the factors linking poor childhood health and educational outcomes. This study addresses this gap by investigating the cognitive and social mechanisms by which poor health may influence the educational outcomes of adolescents. Preliminary results confirm the previously found association between childhood health and educational attainment. Healthy adolescents spend more time studying, and have higher grade point averages. Healthy adolescents also obtain higher scores on the Math Piat test. Adolescents who report poorer health are significantly more likely to be the victims of bullying and are more likely to be involved in physical altercations. The results provide some of the first longitudinal analyses confirming what previous researchers have largely speculated: health influences academic attainment in adolescence, and it does so by influencing students’ performance and their social connections in school. In addition, we will expand this research by more explicitly focusing on the latter mechanism, that is, how health in adolescent influences their social participation in school.