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

Pascaline Dupas, Camille Falezan, Seema Jayachandran and Mark Walsh

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2025, vol. 17, issue 2, 388-417

Abstract: We evaluate a low-cost intervention designed to boost parents' verbal engagement with infants, which tends to be limited in developing countries. In our randomized experiment, recent or expectant mothers watched a three-minute informational video and received a themed calendar. Six months later, treated mothers reported stronger belief in the benefits of verbal engagement, more frequent parent-infant conversation, and more advanced infant language skills. Treatment effects on objective measures of parent-child conversation frequency and infant skills were positive but insignificant. We find larger immediate treatment effects on objective parent-child conversation, suggesting potentially larger long-term effects had the behavior change stuck more.

JEL-codes: D83 D91 I26 J13 J16 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1257/pol.20230283

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