Boys' Cognitive Skill Formation and Physical Growth: Long-Term Experimental Evidence on Critical Ages for Early Childhood Interventions
利用有条件现金转移计划的时间实验变化，检验从胎儿期到两岁前干预对男孩十岁时认知和身体发育的影响，发现认知效果显著但身体发育无差异，后者因追赶生长。
It is often assumed that early life circumstances, in particular before age two, are important for later human capital development. Using experimental variation in the timing of benefits from a conditional cash transfer program, we test the hypothesis that intervention starting in utero and continuing in the first two years is critical. At age ten, boys exposed to the program during this period had better cognitive, but not anthropometric, outcomes than those exposed in their second year of life or later. The lack of a differential effect on anthropometrics was due catch-up growth.