Increasing educational attainment in Egypt: The impact of early childhood care and education

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of early childhood care and education on subsequent educational attainment in Egypt. Comparisons between siblings are used to control for selection and duration analysis methods are used to account for the presence of current students in the data. These methods are compared to OLS to demonstrate the importance of accounting for both observed and unobserved heterogeneity and for students who have not yet completed their schooling. Early childhood care and education significantly reduces the probability of dropping out, specifically during basic education. The change in educational attainment from early childhood care and education is approximately one additional year of schooling. Key pathways for this effect include improved school performance, such as increases in test scores and decreases in repetition, during basic education. Results indicate expanding early childhood care and education would be an important and effective policy for improving educational outcomes.