Medium-Term Impacts of Access to Daycare on School Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from Rio de Janeiro

Accesible PDF image
Peer Reviewed icon Peer Reviewed
Date issued
Apr 2021
Subject
Academic Performance;
School Attendance;
Children;
Impact Evaluation;
Early Childhood Education;
Child Care Quality;
Childhood
JEL code
I21 - Analysis of Education;
I25 - Education and Economic Development;
I38 - Government Policy • Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
Country
Brazil
Category
Technical Notes
In this document we analyze the impacts of a large-scale intervention that provided access to daycare centers for children in low-income neighborhoods in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Our results suggest that the intervention had a positive impact on enrollment rates and on the number of years children were enrolled to daycare during early childhood. We also find that winning the lottery had a positive effect on how regularly children attended primary school during the academic year. Because of the high attrition rates in the sample, we are unable to conclude whether the lottery had a positive impact on medium-term academic outcomes like standardized tests scores and overall grades.