Work

Effects of Integrating Early Childhood with Health Services: Experimental Evidence from the Cresça com Seu Filho Home-Visiting Program

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Delivering early-childhood programs at scale is a major policy challenge. One way to do so is by using existing public infrastructure. This paper experimentally assesses the short-term effects of a new government home-visiting program integrated into health-care services. The program changed the allocation of time for community health workers by asking them to carry out tasks related to early-childhood development. We find that access to the program has a positive but modest effect on home environment quality and no effect on child development or on children’s health status. Our results point to the importance of workload, supervision, and buy-in from delivery actors to enhance fidelity of interventions.

Source: Journal of Human Capital

DOI: 10.1086/734420

Authors: Florencia Lopez Boo, Maria de la Paz Ferro, Pedro Carneiro

Institutions: Institute for Fiscal Studies, Inter-American Development Bank, University College London, New York University, Norwegian School of Economics

Language: English

Topic: Early Childhood Education and Development

Subfield: Education

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: green

Funders: Inter-American Development Bank, European Social Fund