SMU SOE Hybrid Seminar (Mar 5, 2021): Intergenerational Impacts of the World’s Largest Early Childhood Program

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TOPIC:

INTERGENERATIONAL IMPACTS OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAM

ABSTRACT While a large body of work from around the world highlights the impacts of early childhood development programs for individuals who are exposed to these programs, much less is known about the spillovers of such programs on the next generation. To study these effects, we use historical administrative data from the rollout of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program in India, the largest early childhood development program in the world. The ICDS was launched in 1975 by the Indian government to provide primary healthcare services and pre-school education to children under 6 years of age. The empirical strategy exploits the quasi-random rollout of the ICDS centers by comparing outcomes of the children of mothers who were exposed to ICDS centers with children of mothers who were not exposed. To assess the identification assumption, we conduct placebo tests by age of program impact, exploiting the age eligibility criterion for the program. We find positive health impacts for the children of mothers who were exposed to the ICDS along dimensions of infant mortality, stunting, underweight, and low birth weight. Mothers exposed to the ICDS invested more in their children: they were more likely to take iron tablets when pregnant, vaccinate their children, and provide a nutritious diet for their children. Overall, we find no intergenerational impacts from fathers. Maternal education and wealth are key mechanisms and controlling for these variables attenuate the impacts that we find. We conduct a cost-benefit analysis and find that accounting for the intergenerational impacts on child health increases the internal rate of return to the program by 30%. Click here to view the CV.		This seminar will be conducted in a hybrid format. Please click on the register button for more information.
		PRESENTER Saravana Ravindran National University of Singapore
		RESEARCH FIELDS Development Economics Applied Microeconomics Health Economics Economics of Education
		DATE: 5 March 2021 (Friday)
		TIME: 4pm - 5.30pm
		VENUE: Seminar Room 5.1, Level 5 School of Economics Singapore Management University 90 Stamford Road Singapore 178903

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