Giving children a better start: preschool attendance and school-age profiles

Samuel Berlinski, Sebastian Galiani and Marco Manacorda ()

No 4240, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The authors study the effect of pre-primary education on children's subsequent school outcomes by exploitinga unique feature of the Uruguayan household survey (ECH) that collects retrospective information on preschool attendance in the context of a rapid expansion in the supply of pre-primary places. Using a within household estimator, they find small gains from preschool attendance at early ages that magnify as children grow up. By age 15, treated children have accumulated 0.8 extra years of education and are 27 percentage points more likely to be in school compared with their untreated siblings. Instrumental variables estimates that control for nonrandom selection of siblings into preschool lead to similar results. The authors speculate that early grade repetition harms subsequent school progression and that pre-primary education appears as a successful policy option to prevent early grade failure and its long lasting consequences.

Keywords: Primary Education; Education For All; Youth and Governance; Early Childhood Development; Educational Sciences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Giving children a better start: Preschool attendance and school-age profiles (2008)
Working Paper: Giving Children a Better Start: Preschool Attendance and School-Age Profiles (2007)
Working Paper: Giving children a better start: preschool attendance and school-age profiles (2006)
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