Improving Preschool Provision and Encouraging Demand : Heterogeneous Impacts of a Large-Scale Program
This paper experimentally examines the impacts of a large-scale government program that increased the supply and quality of community preschools in rural Cambodia. The construction of new preschool facilities was paired with two demand-side interve...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/282471575302067442/Improving-Preschool-Provision-and-Encouraging-Demand-Heterogeneous-Impacts-of-a-Large-Scale-Program http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33013 |
| Summary: | This paper experimentally examines the
impacts of a large-scale government program that increased
the supply and quality of community preschools in rural
Cambodia. The construction of new preschool facilities was
paired with two demand-side interventions designed to
stimulate additional enrollment into preschools. The newly
constructed preschools caused an increase in enrollment
rates but the demand-side interventions did not. One year
after the program started, the paper finds small and
significant impacts on cognitive (0.04 standard deviations)
and socio-emotional development (0.09 standard deviations).
The analysis shows that the cognitive impacts are driven by
children from the wealthiest quartile, while the program had
limited impacts on children from the poorest families. The
effects on cognitive development increased after two years
for the wealthiest (the cognitive gap widened) while the
effects on socio-emotional development faded out across the
board. Using detailed classroom surveys and in-class
observations, the paper shows that the program had large
impacts on the quality of preschool infrastructure and
materials but only limited impacts the quality of
educational processes -- the results therefore suggest that
further improvement of those processes might be needed to
foster the development of disadvantaged children. |
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