SMU SOE Seminar (Dec 9, 2019): Parental Responses to Early Childhood Education Programs: Theory and Evidence

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ABSTRACT A long-standing question in the economics of early childhood education (ECE) programs is whether parental investments in children are crowded out once children participate in these programs, partially undoing their positive effects. We revisit four well-known ECE programs that targeted children ages 0 to 3 and document parental responses that, if anything, seem to be positive: Parents invest more in their children when they participate in ECE programs. We then develop a mediation analysis to quantify how much this parental response could account for total program effects on child outcomes. We find that, in some cases, this indirect effect through enhanced parenting represents up to 20% of total program effects. We then developed a theoretical model that sheds lights on the multiple potential mechanisms that could be driving the observed parental response. These include traditional crowding-out channels but also novel pathways we propose in the context of our model. Click here to view the CV.
		PRESENTER Juan Pantano University of Arizona
		RESEARCH FIELDS Empirical Microeconomics Labor Economics Health Economics
		DATE: 9 December 2019 (Monday)
		TIME: 4pm - 5.30pm
		VENUE: Meeting Room 5.1, Level 5 School of Economics Singapore Management University 90 Stamford Road Singapore 178903