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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.
Highlights
Evaluations of early childhood programs have played an important role in shaping policy debates on early education
We start with a neighborhood radii of 3 kilometers and larger, which provides us with enough variation in Nit,rt|erated to estimate the effects
The comparison between the effects on treated and control children leads to a conclusion similar to the one we reported under the fixed-effects specification: We do not find any significant differences in spillover effects between children who were assigned to the treatment and control groups.[29]
Summary
Evaluations of early childhood programs have played an important role in shaping policy debates on early education. The Head Start Impact Study (HSIS), a recent randomized control trial of Head Start, reported small effect sizes that fade considerably over a few years (Puma et al, 2010, 2012) These findings have heightened debate among academics over the cost effectiveness of Head Start (e.g. Barnett, 2011; Gibbs, Ludwig, and Miller, 2013; Kline and Walters, 2016) and have been frequently cited by critics who argue Head Start is ineffective in achieving its mission and should be abandoned or seriously reformed.[1] Given the policy impact of the findings from early education interventions, and more broadly any social intervention, accurate evaluation of the total effect of these programs is crucial. The level of social interactions— which are often a key channel through which spillover effects operate—increases at scale, resulting in an even larger bias in impact estimates if spillover effects are ignored (Al-Ubaydli et al, 2017a; Deaton and Cartwright, 2018)
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