Critical Periods in Cognitive and Socioemotional Development: Evidence from Weather Shocks in Indonesia

A large literature now points towards the importance of early life circumstance in determining long-run human capital and wellbeing outcomes. This literature often justifies a focus on the very early years by citing the first 1000 days of life as a ‘critical period’ for child development, but this notion has rarely been directly tested, and it is still unclear whether it applies to socioemotional as well as cognitive development. Using an empirical setting in which children are potentially subject to shocks in every year of their childhood, I estimate the impact of early life weather shocks on adult cognitive and socioemotional outcomes for individuals born in rural Indonesia between 1988 and 2000. I show evidence suggesting there is a strong critical period for these shocks at age 2 for cognitive development, but no similar critical period for socioemotional development. I further demonstrate that the impacts of the shocks are likely to be taking place through household agricultural income and nutrition channels, and may be mitigated by compensatory parental investments.