Early Childhood Human Capital Formation at Scale

Abstract

Can governments leverage existing service-delivery platforms to scale early childhood development (ECD) interventions? We experimentally study a large-scale, light-touch home-visiting intervention — providing materials and counseling — integrated into Bangladesh’s national nutrition program without extra financial incentives for service providers (SPs). We find SPs partially substitute away from nutritional to ECD counseling. Intent-to-treat estimates show positive impacts on child’s cognition (0.17 SD), language (0.23 SD), and socio-emotional scores (0.12-0.14 SD). Wasting and underweight rates also decline. Improved maternal agency, complementary parental investments, and higher take-up of the pre-existing nutrition program are important mechanisms. We estimate a sizeable internal rate-of-return of 18.9%.

Note:
Funding declaration: We are grateful to the World Bank Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF) initiative for the data support. Ravindran is funded by a startup grant at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.

Conflict of Interests: No relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper.

Ethical Approval: This study was approved by American Institutes for Research IRB under IRB00000436 and is registered in the AEA RCT Registry with the identifying number AEARCTR-0008001.

Keywords: J13, J24, I25, H11