Calling All Parents: Leveraging Behavioral Insights to Boost Early Childhood Outcomes in the Developing World

Juanita Bloomfield, Ana Balsa, Alejandro Cid () and Philip Oreopoulos

No 33338, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Early childhood in developing countries faces a greater prevalence of risk factors and limited resources, underscoring the need for effective, scalable support models. We develop and experimentally evaluate a multi-component approach to enhance family well-being over-the-phone. The program combines scalable outreaches including calls by a teleoperator, messages, a chatbot, and an AI tool. Targeted at highly vulnerable families with children aged 0 to 3 in Uruguay, the intervention promotes positive parenting practices at home, fosters language development, and provides personalized assistance to help families access government benefits. The intervention was implemented with 1,360 families eligible for support from the government agency Uruguay Crece Contigo over an eight-month period. We find that the program increases weekly frequency of parental engagement in stimulating activities and reduces parental stress. Treated families gain enhanced access to social benefits, including cash transfers and employment support programs.

JEL-codes: I20 J24 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lam
Note: CH DEV ED LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33338.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
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:nbr:nberwo:33338

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33338
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().