Augmenting State Capacity for Child Development: Experimental Evidence from India

Abstract

We use a large-scale randomized experiment to study the impact of augmenting staffing in the world's largest public early childhood program: India's Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). Adding a half-time worker doubled net preschool instructional time and led to 0.29! and 0.46! increases in math and language test scores after 18 months for children who remained enrolled in the program. Rates of stunting and severe malnutrition were also lower in the treatment group. A cost-benefit analysis suggests that the benefits of augmenting ICDS staffing are likely to significantly exceed its costs even under conservative assumptions.

Socioemotional Skills Development in Highly Violent Contexts: Measurements and Impacts

“…for Mindful, and US$327.6 for Virtue), which is only 1/7 the cost of similar programs for at-risk youth in the United States (Heller et al, 2017). Remarkably, our back-to-the-envelope calculation, which follows Ganimian et al (2021) andHolla et al (2021) and the framework of Hendren and Sprung-Keyser (2020) on the marginal value of investments using public funds, shows a benefit-cost ratio that ranges from 12.5 to 50.2. Hence, from a public policy perspective, this program is worth investing in because it is likely to pay for itself in the short run and can even generate large additional welfare gains in the long run.…”

“…for Clubs, US$292.5 for Mindful, and US$327.6 for Virtue). 50 Based on the literature that estimates the relationship between human capital interventions and impacts on adult earnings (Holla et al, 2021;Ganimian et al, 2021;Galasso and Wagstaff, 2019) and following the framework of Hendren and Sprung-Keyser (2020) on the marginal value of investments using public funds, we conducted an approximate calculation of the program's benefit-cost ratio. 51 Our estimates indicate that the present discounted value of earning gains expected to result from this ASP's impact due to improvements in behavior at school and an indirect potential reduction in school dropout yields a benefit-cost ratio that ranges from 12.5 to 50.2.…”

“…We conduct the cost-effectiveness analysis of the ASP according to previously documented approaches of Holla et al ( 2021); Ganimian et al (2021); Galasso and Wagstaff (2019) and the framework of Hendren and Sprung-Keyser (2020) by estimating the relationship between human capital interventions and impacts on adult earnings on the marginal value of investments using public funds. More specifically, we estimate the intervention's cost-benefit by considering its indirect impact on reducing school dropout by improving behavior at school.…”

The Incidence of Affirmative Action: Evidence from Quotas in Private Schools in India

“…Our estimates of the aggregate effect compare favorably with other related interventions implemented at scale in similar settings. For instance, in other Indian states, Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2015) find that school vouchers have little aggregate impact on the likelihood of attending private schools after 2 years (and a local average treatment effect effect of 0.23σ after 4 years), while Ganimian et al (2021) report aggregate treatment effects of 0.29σ after 18 months of doubling personnel at public childcare centers. 39 Globally, Evans and Yuan (2020) review 156 randomized control trials in developing countries and report a median effect size of 0.1σ (0.05σ for large trials with N>5,000).…”

“…During our study period, the quota seats displayed similar cost effectiveness as some of the most promising initiatives in India that have been evaluated with children in preschool and school-entry age under business-as-usual settings. For instance, the policy appears more effective than a contract worker added to public preschool centers, where Ganimian et al (2021) find effect sizes of 0.29σ at a cost of $200, or school vouchers in Andhra Pradesh, where Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2015) report (insignificant) gains of 0.016 SD after two years at an average cost of $45 per child per year, or the home visit program evaluated by Andrew et al (2020) with treatment effects of 0.19-0.22σ after 18 months at a cost of $135 per child per year. 40 It is, however, less effective than the group-based early childhood education sessions program evaluated in Grantham-McGregor et al (2020), which generated effects of ∼0.3σ after two years at an average cost of $38 per child per year.…”