Parental Incentives and Early Childhood Achievement: A Field Experiment in Chicago Heights

Roland Fryer (), Steven Levitt and John List

No 21477, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This article describes a randomized field experiment in which parents were provided financial incentives to engage in behaviors designed to increase early childhood cognitive and executive function skills through a parent academy. Parents were rewarded for attendance at early childhood sessions, completing homework assignments with their children, and for their child’s demonstration of mastery on interim assessments. This intervention had large and statistically significant positive impacts on both cognitive and non-cognitive test scores of Hispanics and Whites, but no impact on Blacks. These differential outcomes across races are not attributable to differences in observable characteristics (e.g. family size, mother’s age, mother’s education) or to the intensity of engagement with the program. Children with above median (pre-treatment) non cognitive scores accrue the most benefits from treatment.

JEL-codes: I20 J01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu, nep-exp, nep-ger and nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (73)

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Working Paper: Parental Incentives and Early Childhood Achievement: A Field Experiment in Chicago Heights (2015)
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