Physical punishment as a predictor of early cognitive development: Evidence from econometric approaches.
- 1 November 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Psychological Association (APA) in Developmental Psychology
- Vol. 56 (11), 2013-2026
- https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001114
Abstract
This study estimates the effect of physical punishment on the cognitive development of 1.167 low-income Colombian children (M-age = 17.8 months old) using 3 analytic strategies: lagged-dependent variables, a difference-in-differences-like approach (DD), and a novel strategy combining matching with a DD-like approach. Across approaches, physical punishment at ages 9-26 months predicted reductions in children's cognitive development of 0.08-0.21 SD at ages 27-46 months. These results, plus null results of falsification tests, strengthen the argument that physical punishment leads to slower cognitive growth and illustrate the utility of alternative statistical methods to reduce problems of selection bias in developmental research.This publication has 45 references indexed in Scilit:
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