Head Start and the Distribution of Long Term Education and Labor Market Outcomes

Monique De Haan and Edwin Leuven

No 9915, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper we investigate the effect of Head Start on long term education and labor market outcomes using data from the NLSY79. The contributions to the existing literature on the effectiveness of Head Start are threefold: (1) we are the first to examine distributional effects of Head Start on long term outcomes (2) we do not rely on quasi-experimental variation in Head Start participation but instead perform a nonparametric bounds analysis that relies on weak stochastic dominance assumptions and (3) we consider education and labor market outcomes observed for individuals in their early 30s. The results show that Head Start has a statistically significant positive effect on years of education, in particular for women, blacks and Hispanics. For wage income we also find evidence that Head Start has beneficial impacts, with effects located at the lower end of the distribution.

Keywords: partial identification; long term outcomes; early intervention; Head Start (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I21 J13 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published in: Journal of Labor Economics 2020, 38 (3), 727–765

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9915.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Head Start and the Distribution of Long-Term Education and Labor Market Outcomes (2020)
Working Paper: Head Start and the Distribution of Long Term Education and Labor Market Outcomes (2016)
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:dp9915

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 ().