Informing Mothers about the Benefits of Conversing with Infants: Experimental Evidence from Ghana

Pascaline Dupas, Camille Falezan, Seema Jayachandran and Mark Walsh
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Camille Falezan: MIT
Mark Walsh: Stanford University

Working Papers from Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies.

Abstract: Despite the well-established importance of verbal engagement for infant language and cognitive development, many parents in low-income contexts do not converse with their infants regularly. This paper reports on a randomized field experiment evaluating a low-cost intervention designed to boost verbal engagement with infants. The intervention entails showing recent or expectant mothers a 3-minute informational video and providing them with a themed wall calendar. Six to eight months later, mothers who participated reported a stronger belief in the benefits of verbally engaging with infants, more frequent parent-infant conversations, and more advanced language and communication skills of their infants. Treatment effects on objective measures of parent-child conversation (from a recording device) and infant language and cognitive skills (from surveyors’ observations) were statistically insignificant but consistently positive. We find larger effects on objectively measured parent-child conversation immediately after the intervention, suggesting scope for a larger long-term effect had the behavior change stuck more. The intervention’s potential for low-cost implementation via health clinics makes it a promising strategy for early childhood development in low-income contexts, particularly if complemented by efforts to support habit formation.

Keywords: Ghana, early childhood development; infant-directed speech; human capital; information intervention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D19 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-neu
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Working Paper: Informing Mothers about the Benefits of Conversing with Infants: Experimental Evidence from Ghana (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pri:cepsud:324

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