Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP13725
Authors: John List; Fatemeh Momeni; Yves Zenou
Abstract: We estimate the direct and spillover effects of a large-scale early childhood intervention on the educational attainment of over 2,000 disadvantaged children in the United States. We show that failing to account for spillover effects results in a severe underestimation of the impact. The intervention induced positive direct effects on test scores of children assigned to the treatment groups. We document large spillover effects on both treatment and control children who live near treated children. On average, spillover effects increase a child's non-cognitive (cognitive) scores by about 1.2 (0.6 to 0.7) standard deviations. The spillover effects are localized, decreasing with the spatial distance to treated neighbors. Our evidence suggests the spillover effect on non-cognitive scores are likely to operate through the child's social network. Alternatively, parental investment is an important channel through which cognitive spillover effects operate. We view our results as speaking to several literatures, perhaps most importantly the role of public programs and neighborhoods on human capital formation at an early age.
Keywords: early education; neighborhood; field experiment; spillover effects; noncognitive skills
JEL Codes: C93; I21; R1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| early education programs (A21) | cognitive scores (D91) |
| early education programs (A21) | noncognitive scores (C52) |
| treated neighbors (F55) | cognitive scores (D91) |
| treated neighbors (F55) | noncognitive scores (C52) |
| spillover effects (F69) | total impact on cognitive scores (D91) |
| spillover effects (F69) | total impact on noncognitive scores (D29) |
| spillover effects (F69) | cognitive scores for African American children (I24) |
| spillover effects (F69) | cognitive scores for Hispanic children (I24) |