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Two Chicago GSB economists have gone where few economists have gone before—the debate about whether or not television is harmful to children. Matthew Gentzkow, an assistant professor of economics, and Jesse Shapiro, a research fellow, looked at how television affects a child’s test scores. Their findings, released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, showed television had very little effect. Elizabeth Vandewater, a leading figure in the study of television and children praised Gentzkow and Shapiro’s efforts for providing “more evidence that television is not uniformly evil or bad”.
As reported in the New York Times, the two economists used data collected in the late 1940s and early 1950s when television was being rolled out to cities across the country. Because some areas got television five years ahead of others, the researchers were able to compile data on pre-school children who had been exposed at different points in their lives. They then obtained national test scores on 300,000 children from 1965.
Fellow GSB professor Austan Goolsbee, Robert P. Gwinn Professor of economics, wrote about the study for Slate in an article entitled “The Benefits of Bozo”. He explained the major significance of the data employed in the research. Gentzkow and Shapiro could compare test scores for similar age groups in several cities where each had viewed television for different amounts of time. They also could compare test scores for similar age groups within a city who had started watching television at different ages.
On broader issues, the authors emphasized the study did not look how content affected children. Nor was it meant to compare programs from the 1950s to today.
The New York Times article ran on February 27, 2006.