Evaluation of the Reggio Approach to Early Education

Pietro Biroli (), Daniela Del Boca, James Heckman, Lynne Pettler Heckman (), Yu Kyung Koh (), Sylvi Kuperman (), Sidharth Moktan (), Chiara Pronzato and Anna Ziff ()
Additional contact information
Lynne Pettler Heckman: University of Chicago
Yu Kyung Koh: University of Chicago
Sylvi Kuperman: University of Chicago
Sidharth Moktan: University of Chicago
Anna Ziff: University of Chicago

No 10742, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We evaluate the Reggio Approach using non-experimental data on individuals from the cities of Reggio Emilia, Parma and Padova belonging to one of five age cohorts: ages 50, 40, 30, 18, and 6 as of 2012. The treated were exposed to municipally offered infant-toddler (ages 0–3) and preschool (ages 3–6) programs. The control group either didn't receive formal childcare or were exposed to programs offered by the state or religious systems. We exploit the city-cohort structure of the data to estimate treatment effects using three strategies: difference-in-differences, matching, and matched-difference-in-differences. Most positive and significant effects are generated from comparisons of the treated with individuals who did not receive formal childcare. Relative to not receiving formal care, the Reggio Approach significantly boosts outcomes related to employment, socio-emotional skills, high school graduation, election participation, and obesity. Comparisons with individuals exposed to alternative forms of childcare do not yield strong patterns of positive and significant effects. This suggests that differences between the Reggio Approach and other alternatives are not sufficiently large to result in significant differences in outcomes. This interpretation is supported by our survey, which documents increasing similarities in the administrative and pedagogical practices of childcare systems in the three cities over time.

Keywords: evaluation; Reggio Approach; Italian education; early childhood education; childcare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I26 I28 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu, nep-eur and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published in: Research in Economics, 2018, 72 (1), 1-32

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10742.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Evaluation of the Reggio approach to early education (2018)
Working Paper: Evaluation of the Reggio Approach to Early Education (2017)
Working Paper: Evaluation of the Reggio Approach to Early Education (2017)
Working Paper: Evaluation of the Reggio Approach to Early Education (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10742

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().