Parents' discount rate and the intergenerational transmission of cognitive skills

We use estimates of parents' discount rate, inferred from their decisions to treat their children's body burdens of lead, to test empirically a model of transmission of cognitive skills from parents to children. The development of a child's cognitive skills depends in part upon the specific environment in which the skills are nurtured. The parental discount rate serves as a theoretically well defined index for a broad array of nurturing investments in the child. We find that children whose parents have a lower estimated discount rate exhibit higher assessed cognitive skills.