Workforce Quality and Early Childhood Development at Scale

Sarah Cattan, Gabriella Conti and Christine Farquharson

No 21418, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

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.

JEL-codes: I38 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
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Related works:
Working Paper: Workforce Quality and Early Childhood Development at Scale (2026)
Working Paper: Workforce Quality and Early Childhood Development at Scale (2026)
Working Paper: Workforce quality and early childhood development at scale (2026)
Working Paper: Workforce Quality and Early Childhood Development at Scale (2026)
Working Paper: Workforce Quality and Early Childhood Development at Scale (2026)
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