Improving Access and Quality in Early Childhood Development Programs: Experimental Evidence from The Gambia

Moussa Blimpo (), Pedro Carneiro, Pamela Jervis and Todd Pugatch

No 318, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: This paper studies two experiments of early childhood development programs in The Gambia: one increasing access to services, and another improving service quality. In the first experiment, new community-based early childhood development (ECD) centers were introduced to randomly chosen villages that had no pre-existing structured ECD services. In the second experiment, a randomly assigned subset of existing ECD centers received intensive provider training. We find no evidence that either intervention improved average levels of child development. Exploratory analysis suggests that, in fact, the first experiment, which increased access to relatively low quality ECD services, led to declines in child development among children from less disadvantaged households. Evidence supports that these households may have been steered away from better quality early childhood settings in their homes.

Keywords: early childhood development; cognitive stimulation; teacher training; The Gambia; randomized control trials; Malawi Developmental Assessment Tool (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 I38 O15 O22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-exp and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/191946/1/GLO-DP-0318.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Improving Access and Quality in Early Childhood Development Programs: Experimental Evidence from the Gambia (2022)
Working Paper: Improving Access and Quality in Early Childhood Development Programs: Experimental Evidence from The Gambia (2019)
Working Paper: Improving Access and Quality in Early Childhood Development Programs: Experimental Evidence from the Gambia (2019)
Working Paper: Improving Access and Quality in Early Childhood Development Programs: Experimental Evidence from The Gambia (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:318

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