Workforce Quality and Early Childhood Development at Scale

Sarah Cattan (), Gabriella Conti () and Christine Farquharson ()
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Sarah Cattan: Institute for Fiscal Studies, HCEO, IZA, CESifo
Gabriella Conti: University College London, Institute for Fiscal Studies, CEPR, CESifo, CSEF, IZA, RFBerlin, https://csef.it/people/gabriella-conti/
Christine Farquharson: Institute for Fiscal Studies

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: Early childhood programmes frequently lose effectiveness at scale, yet the role of the workforce remains poorly understood. We document substantial heterogeneity in workforce effectiveness in England’s national home-visiting programme for first-time teenage mothers, despite a highly-structured curriculum and well-qualified staff. Exploiting quasi-random assignment of mothers to family nurses, we estimate that a one standard deviation increase in workforce effectiveness raises children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development by 0.20-0.23 SD. Structural quality—observable worker characteristics —does not predict effectiveness, but process quality —how visits are delivered— does. Greater effectiveness is linked with improvements in maternal mental health and risk behaviours.

Keywords: Early Childhood Development; Home Visiting; Workforce Quality; Process Quality; Scaling; Family Nurse Partnership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I38 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04-20
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sef:csefwp:777

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