Working Paper: NBER ID: w31264
Authors: Pascaline Dupas; Camille Falezan; Seema Jayachandran; Mark P. Walsh
Abstract: Despite the well-established importance of verbal engagement for infant language and cognitive development, many parents in low-income contexts do not converse with their infants regularly. We report on a randomized field experiment evaluating a low-cost intervention that aims to raise verbal engagement with infants by showing recent or expectant mothers a 3-minute informational video and giving them a themed wall calendar. Six to eight months later, mothers selected for the intervention report greater belief in the benefits of verbally engaging with infants, more frequent parent-infant conversations, and that their infants have more advanced language and cognitive skills. We measure positive but noisy effects on parental verbal inputs in a day-long recording and on surveyor-observed infant cognitive skills. The intervention could be delivered to expectant mothers through existing health clinics at very low marginal cost so could be a highly cost-effective early childhood development policy in low-income contexts.
Keywords: infant development; parenting; verbal engagement; low-income countries; randomized controlled trial
JEL Codes: D19; I25; O15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Intervention (D74) | Maternal beliefs (J13) |
| Intervention (D74) | Parental verbal inputs (J13) |
| Parental verbal inputs (J13) | Infant cognitive skills (G53) |
| Intervention (D74) | Infant cognitive skills (G53) |
| Intervention (D74) | Verbal engagement (Y20) |