The Effect of Early Education on Social Preferences

Alexander Cappelen, John List, Anya Samek and Bertil Tungodden

Framed Field Experiments from The Field Experiments Website

Abstract: We present results from the first study to examine the causal impact of early childhood education on social preferences of children. We compare children who, at 3-4 years old, were randomized into either a full-time preschool, a parenting program with incentives, or to a control group. We returned to the same children when they reach 7-8 years old a conducted a series of incentivized experiments to elicit there social preferences. We find that early childhood education has a strong causal impact on social preferences several years after the intervention: attending preschool makes children more egalitarian in their fairness view and the parenting program enhances the importance children place on efficiency relative to fairness. Our findings highlight the importance of taking a broad perspective when designing and evaluating early childhood education programs, and provide evidence how differences in institutional exposure may contribute to explaining heterogeneity in social preferences in society.

Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-exp
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Effect of Early Education on Social Preferences (2017)
Working Paper: The Effect of Early Education on Social Preferences (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:feb:framed:00584

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