Augmenting State Capacity for Child Development: Experimental Evidence from India
通过随机实验，研究在印度最大的公共早期儿童项目中增加工作人员的影响，发现增加一名工作人员使学前教育时间翻倍，并显著提高了儿童的数学和语言成绩，同时降低了发育迟缓率。
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. Adding a worker doubled net preschool instructional time and led to increases of 0.28σ and 0.46σ in math and language test scores after 18 months for children who remained enrolled in the program and 0.13σ and 0.10σ for all children enrolled at baseline. Rates of stunting and severe malnutrition were also lower in the treatment group for children who remained enrolled. A cost-benefit analysis suggests that the benefits of augmenting staffing significantly exceed its costs. These effects are likely to replicate even at larger scales of program implementation.