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Middle-run educational impacts of comprehensive early childhood interventions: evidence from a pioneer program in Chile

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Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of comprehensive and universal early childhood development programs on educational outcomes during middle childhood. I exploit the birth eligibility cutoff of a pioneer intervention of this type in Chile and use administrative data on grade point averages and standardized test scores. Program exposure raises standardized math scores by 1.8% of a standard deviation, standardized reading scores by 4.0% of a standard deviation, and grade point averages by 0.03% of a standard deviation. I find that socioeconomically vulnerable children benefit less from program exposure. The educational marginal value of public funds indicates that the program is beneficial overall and pays for itself.

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Data Availibility Statement

Data can be requested from the Government of Chile under a Data Usage Agreement.

Notes

  1. Examples of targeted interventions include the Perry Preschool program (Heckman et al. 2010), the Jamaica study (Gertler et al. 2014), the Abecedarian experiment (Campbell et al. 2014), or targeted programs in Colombia (Attanasio et al. 2020).

  2. The researchers highlight that families who cannot provide their children with the necessary input to reach their developmental potential need support. This support should consist of materials, financial resources, knowledge, time, and professional assistance, as well as protection, prevention, and education.

  3. In English: Chile Grows With You.

  4. Hendren and Sprung-Keyser (2020) interpret a negative MVPF as infinite.

  5. This aspect has been broadly discussed in the academic literature. For a more recent outline of the literature, see Arnup et al. (2022).

  6. For a recent discussion, see Cobb-Clark and Moschion (2017).

  7. ChCC has inspired similar programs in Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, El Salvador, and South Africa (Ministry of Health 2017).

  8. Chile is a high-income OECD member country in Latin America. Although it joined the OECD in 2010, it is still considered a developing country (United Nations 2022).

  9. See for example work by Ludwig and Miller (2007), Almond et al. (2011), Hoynes et al. (2011), Amarante et al. (2016), Goodman-Bacon (2018), and Ko et al. (2020).

  10. Example studies conducted by Deming (2009), Chetty et al. (2011), Campbell et al. (2014), Hoynes et al. (2016), Bharadwaj et al. (2018), Akee et al. (2020), Bailey et al. (2020), Bailey et al. (2021), Brown et al. (2020), Goodman-Bacon (2021), and Levere (2021) give a great entry to the topic.

  11. One paper by Amarante et al. (2016) analyzes the effect of the PANES program on birth outcomes in Uruguay.

  12. Chile assumes a score of 60.3 on the index. In comparison, the US ranks 27th with a score of 70.4 (World Economic Forum 2020).

  13. Chile Solidario is the social protection system for the poor population in Chile. It offers several programs and services aimed at improving the living conditions of these people.

  14. The 2006 socioeconomic household survey (CASEN) showed that 21.9% of children under the age of four lived in poverty, a higher share than in the overall population (13.7%) (Villalobos 2011). Moreover, the National Survey on Life Quality and Health revealed some troubling results. The study found that 30% of children below 5 years old did not meet internationally established development goals, and it revealed that significant developmental gaps existed between income quintiles with respect to child development (Villalobos 2011). Another gap was observed in early education. Coverage of early education in general was low. Only 26.5% of children between 2 and 3 years old attended kindergarten, while only 6% of children under two attended pre-kindergarten (Villalobos 2011). The gaps between income quintiles were marked, with four times more children from the top quintile attending early education facilities than children from the bottom quintile (Villalobos 2011).

  15. The program was expanded to include children from 5 to 9 years of age in 2017.

  16. Importantly, ChCC did not introduce all services listed in the Appendix, but enhanced them, developed them further, increased their scope and coverage, and improved their coordination and linkage with each other.

  17. Primary schooling in Chile includes children from 6 to 14 years old and ranges from grade 1 to grade 8.

  18. Dynamic complementarities refer to the fact that early inputs in human capital affect the productivity of later inputs, a phenomenon that Cunha and Heckman (2007) call self-productivity.

  19. The authors highlight that a reallocation of resources from later to earlier in life creates Pareto improvements.

  20. I follow Bailey et al. (2020) who scale ITT effects by approximate participation rates to estimate the TOT in their study on the large-scale evidence from the food stamps program. Ideally, one would want to observe the actual treatment status of children to distinguish compliers from non-compliers. However, the educational datasets used in this paper lack information on program participation, which is why the main estimation relies on ITT effects.

  21. I take advantage of the command eventdd provided by Clarke and Tapia-Schythe (2021).

  22. Results are available upon request.

  23. For the detailed development of copper prices, see https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper, and for a graphical overview, see Fig. B1 in the Appendix.

  24. School entries are defined via the 31st of March of each year. To enter school, children must be at least 6 years old on this day. I do not account for cohort fixed effects in my regression, as more than 99% of all children belong to fourth grade.

  25. The RD coefficient is 7.836 for standardized math scores, 7.342 for standardized reading scores, and 0.106 for grade point averages.

  26. Appendix E presents a detailed overview of the methodology.

  27. The MVPF decreases to \(-\)42.9 when using a discount rate of 5% and to \(-\)43.5 when using a discount rate of 7%.

  28. While in one of the Scenarios, the resulting MVPF is slightly positive, this particular scenario is unlikely as the program’s impact on income is close to zero in this particular scenario.

  29. I assume that \(\phi \) is one.

  30. Importantly, a low MVPF does not imply that a policy is undesirable or an inefficient use of government funds. Instead, it suggests that providing the benefits associated with a policy comes at a relatively high cost, which may not necessarily be undesirable. For instance, Hendren and Sprung-Keyser (2020) find lower MVPFs for transfers to disabled children and their families. These policies can still provide significant societal benefits, depending on one’s preferences for income redistribution. Nevertheless, a low MVPF can serve as an initial indication that there may be opportunities to enhance the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of existing programs.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Andreas Backhaus, Mathias Bühler, Yvonne Giesing, Roberto Gonzalez, Eric A. Hanushek, Steven Hemelt, Panu Poutvaara, Helmut Rainer, Claudia Steinwender, Ludger Wößmann, Larissa Zierow, editor Terra McKinnish, and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions. I thank participants at the CEMIR Seminar 2020 in Munich, the iFO Christmas Conference 2020, the IAAEU 2021, the CRC Summer School 2021, and the JEL 2021 for valuable comments. I thank Lucas Perasolo Vicentim for his excellent research assistance. I thank Juan Diego Alonso and Veronica Silva Villalobos from the World Bank under whose guidance I learned about ChCC. This research paper uses raw data provided by the Chilean Agency for Quality Assurance in Education. I thank the Chilean Agency for Quality Assurance in Education for allowing me access to the data. The results shown here are the author’s and in no way those of the Chilean Agency for Quality Assurance in Education.

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    Britta Rude

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Rude, B. Middle-run educational impacts of comprehensive early childhood interventions: evidence from a pioneer program in Chile. J Popul Econ 37, 38 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-024-01011-0

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