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Early childhood
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The Long-Run Impacts of Universal Pre-K with Equilibrium Considerations
Since 1995, publicly funded pre-K with universal eligibility has proliferated across the U.S. Universal pre-K (UPK) operates at great scale and serves children with a wide range of alternative childcare options. Because these programs are relatively young, very little is known about their long-run impacts on children. In this paper, I use a difference-in-differences (DiD) design to estimate the long-run impacts of Georgia UPK, the first statewide program. Children exposed to UPK were 1.7% more likely to graduate high school, 11.1% less likely to receive SNAP benefits as adults, and girls were 10.6% less likely to have children as teenagers. To help interpret those results, I develop a simple conceptual framework that considers how public pre-K expansions can affect the entire childcare market. For instance, greater competition could force private centers to adjust prices and quality, or to close entirely—creating spillover impacts on children not enrolled in public pre-K. Empirically, I find evidence consistent with large spillovers in Georgia, suggesting that a focus on UPK enrollees would miss a key part of the program’s overall impact. Further, I show that conventional DiD estimates of treatment effects on the treated may be substantially biased in the presence of spillovers—in the Georgia context and in others.
Are Preschool Programs Becoming Less Effective?
High-quality preschool programs are heralded as an effective policy tool to promote the development and life-long wellbeing of children from low-income families. Yet evaluations of recent preschool programs produce puzzling findings, including negative impacts, and divergent, weaker results than were shown in demonstration programs implemented in the 1960s and 70s. We provide potential explanations for why modern evaluations of preschool programs have produced less positive and more mixed results, focusing on changes in counterfactual conditions and preschool instructional practices. We also address popular explanations such as subsequent low-quality schooling experiences that, we argue, do not appear to account for weakening program effectiveness. The field must take seriously the smaller positive, null, and negative impacts from modern programs and strive to understand why effects vary and how to boost program effectiveness through rigorous, longitudinal research.
The Long-Term Effect of North Carolina Pre-Kindergarten is Larger in School Districts with Lower Rates of Growth in Academic Achievement
Prior research has found that public investments in North Carolina’s pre-kindergarten program—NC Pre-K—generated positive effects on student reading and math achievement through eighth grade (Bai et al., 2020). This study examined whether the effect of NC Pre-K funding exposure is moderated by the educational environments children subsequently experience during elementary and middle school. The NC Pre-K effect on student reading and math achievement in eighth grade was found to be larger in school districts with lower rates of growth in academic achievement. These findings suggest that public investments in early childhood education may be particularly beneficial in the long term for children who subsequently experience low-growth school environments—consistent with a dynamic substitutability hypothesis of combined effects.
Human Capital at Home: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in the Philippines
Children spend most of their time at home in their early years, yet efforts to promote human capital at home in many low- and middle-income settings remain limited. We conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an intervention which encourages parents and caregivers to foster human capital accumulation among their children between ages 3 and 5, with a focus on math and phonics skills. Children gain 0.52 and 0.51 standard deviations relative to the control group on math and phonics tests, respectively (p<0.001). A year later effects persist, but math gains dissipate to 0.15 (p=0.06) and phonics to 0.13 (p=0.12). Effects appear to be mediated largely through instructional support by parents and not other parent investment mechanisms, such as more positive parent-child interactions or additional time spent on education at home beyond the intervention. Our results show that parents can be effective conduits of educational instruction even in low-resource settings.
Changes in Kindergarten Redshirting During the COVID-19 Pandemic
This study examined the impact of COVID-19 on academic "redshirting" in kindergarten, the practice of holding a child back for a year and enrolling them in kindergarten at age 6, using student-level data on all Delaware kindergarten students from fall 2014 through fall 2022. The rate of redshirting declined by 40% in fall 2020, then increased by 44% (relative to pre-pandemic baseline) in fall 2021, and more for some subgroups of children traditionally less likely to redshirt. Further, redshirting was not restricted to children with summer birthdays, as in previous years, with growth seen across the age distribution. Redshirting had not returned to pre-pandemic baseline by fall 2022. These findings point to changes in the motivations for redshirting kindergarten students since the pandemic.
The Effects of Public Pre-K for 3-year-olds on Early Elementary School Outcomes: Evidence from the DC Centralized Lottery
This study examines the effects of universal public pre-kindergarten for 3-year-olds (Pre-K3) on later public education outcomes, including enrollment, school mobility, special education status, and in-grade retention from kindergarten through second grade. While universal pre-kindergarten programs typically target 4-year-olds, interest in expanding to 3-year-olds is growing. Using the centralized assignment lottery in the District of Columbia as the basis for a quasi-experimental design, we find that Pre-K3 students are more likely to persist in the public system and remain in the same school. These effects are strongest for residents of low-income neighborhoods and communities of color and for students enrolled in dual language programs. Overall, public Pre-K3 appears to stabilize children’s early educational experiences, especially those starting furthest from opportunity.
The Causal Effect of Parenting Style on Early Child Development
This paper presents causal evidence on the impact of parenting practices on early child development. We exploit exogenous changes in nurturing care induced by a parent training intervention to estimate the impact of nurturing parenting practices on child outcomes. We find a large and significant impact measured at age two; in contrast, at age four nurturing care has only a modest, and imprecisely estimated, impact on child outcomes. This is despite the fact that the intervention induced substantial changes in parenting practices at both ages. The differential relationship between child development and nurturing care at ages two and four explains the fade-out in treatment effects for the intervention as a whole: although parents continued to respond, their response no longer had the intended effect on child outcomes.
Is Authorized Capacity a Good Measure of Child Care Providers’ Current Capacity? New evidence from Virginia
Demand for child care in the United States outpaces supply. Understanding access issues is critical for addressing them and supporting children, families, and the economy. However, the most widely available proxy for child care supply—authorized capacity—likely overestimates care availability. Authorized capacity represents the maximum children a provider can legally serve based on safety regulations and physical characteristics of the site. However, the slots available across sites can be constrained by factors not captured by authorized capacity, including the combination of ages currently enrolled and staffing at a site. If the gap between authorized capacity and “current capacity” is large, we stand to underestimate needed investments to improve access. This study quantifies the gap between providers’ “current capacity” as reported in a fall 2022 survey and authorized capacity per administrative records. Using data from 1,968 home- and center-based providers in Virginia, we find three key limitations of authorized capacity as a proxy of supply. First, providers’ current capacity was 74% of their authorized capacity on average. Authorized capacity would overestimate child care availability by more than 30,000 slots across the providers in our sample. Second, center-based providers that accepted child care subsidies and those in neighborhoods with a greater concentration of poverty or people of color had significantly larger discrepancies between their current and authorized capacity. Finally, we find centers that reported challenges hiring and retaining staff had larger gaps between their current and authorized capacity compared to providers that did not report staffing challenges. These findings suggest the need for measures that more accurately and dynamically capture the number of children a provider can serve to better describe and address access inequities.
The Challenges of Scaling up Effective Child-Rearing Practices Using Technology in Developing Settings: Experimental Evidence From India
Home-visitation programs have improved child development in low- and middle-income countries, but they are costly to scale due to their reliance on trained workers. We evaluated an inexpensive and low-tech alternative with 2,433 caregivers of children aged 6 to 30 months served by 250 public childcare centers in Uttarakhand, India: automated phone calls offering parenting advice. The intervention was implemented largely as intended, with more than two-thirds of caregivers completing at least 10 calls. Yet, counter to expectations, it had negative but statistically insignificant effects on caregivers’ knowledge and interactions with their children, reduced their self-efficacy (by 0.11 standard deviations), and increased their anxiety (by 0.10 standard deviations). Consistent with this pattern, it had precisely estimated null effects on children’s development and language. An analysis of program materials suggests four reasons why the program may not have had the desired effects.
The Effect of Early Childhood Programs on Third-Grade Test Scores: Evidence from Transitional Kindergarten in Michigan
Transitional Kindergarten (TK) is a relatively recent entrant into the U.S. early education landscape, combining features of public pre-K and regular kindergarten. We provide the first estimates of the impact of Michigan’s TK program on 3rd grade test scores. Using an augmented regression discontinuity design, we find that TK improves 3rd grade math scores by 0.29 standard deviations relative to a counterfactual that includes other formal and informal learning options. This impact is notably large relative to the prior pre-K literature. Estimates for English Language Arts (ELA) are imprecise but suggestive of a positive effect as well.