Workforce Quality and Early Childhood Development at Scale

SaRAH Cattan, Gabriella Conti () and Christine Farquharson
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SaRAH Cattan: IFS
Gabriella Conti: University College London
Christine Farquharson: IFS

No 18584, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

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
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