Supporting early childhood development remotely: Experimental evidence from SMS messages

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hernandez-Agramonte, Juan Manuel; Namen, Olga; Naslund-Hadley, Emma; Biehl, Maria Loreto
• 署名单位: Inter-American Development Bank
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103201
• 发表日期: 2024
• 关键词: Remote education; Early childhood development; Text messages; Parenting; Covid-19; Parental networks; Parental school involvement

摘要

Using a randomized field experiment in Costa Rica, we estimate the effect of providing parents of preschool students with regular text messages offering ways to engage their children in educational activities at home. After 15 weeks of intervention, the cognitive skills of children whose families were assigned to the program were 0.11-0.12 standard deviations higher than the control group. We find suggestive evidence that the effect was driven by an increase in parents' involvement as they conducted the activities proposed in the text message campaign.