Early Child Development Programs: Effective Interventions for Human Development

描述（由申请人提供）：学龄前儿童的早期儿童发展（ECD）-认知，非认知和身体健康-越来越被视为对以后生活中的健康和社会经济福祉至关重要。但是，发展中国家有超过2.4亿5岁以下儿童没有达到他们的发展潜力。在发展中国家，对幼儿发展的宣传和用于幼儿发展的资源已大量增加。然而，我们所知道的这些方案的影响是基于很少的研究，通常与小样本，有限的结果指标，有限的程序信息，小规模的操作和往往问题的解释协会反映因果关系的影响。该项目利用丰富的新数据集，对15 000名最初为0- 5岁的儿童及其家庭进行全国代表性纵向抽样，并利用相关数据，广泛描述儿童及其家庭成员的特点，以及他们在智利接受的幼儿发展方案，从而有望大幅增加对幼儿发展的了解。具体目标是：（1）：为了丰富2009年启动并将至少持续到2011年的公共使用小组数据集，该数据集涉及15 000名最初为0- 5岁的儿童及其家庭，是一个具有全国代表性的样本，与其他数据（包括所有家庭成员的经济、健康和其他相关信息;儿童学校和国家考试成绩以及幼儿发展中心质量）相关联，并进行嵌入式实验。(2)描述幼儿发展方案参与和质量以及幼儿发展成果（包括认知发展、非认知发展和身体健康）的年龄-性别-社会经济服务-区域梯度/不平等。(3)分析幼儿发展项目参与情况。(4)分析幼儿发展计划对儿童认知发展、非认知发展和身体健康的影响，包括质量和课程重点。(5)：分析幼儿发展方案对母亲时间利用的影响（例如，工作时间）和他们的一般生活满意度和抑郁症。(6)评估改善幼儿发展的各种干预措施的成本效益和成本效益比率，为决策者提供更好的工具，以便在各种干预措施中作出更明智的选择。(7)模拟旨在改善幼儿发展的干预措施对年龄-性别-社会经济服务-区域梯度/幼儿发展机会不平等以及认知发展、非认知发展和身体健康结果的预期影响。特殊数据特征的组合（例如，具有全国代表性的大样本;与其他数据来源的联系;认知、非认知和身体发展指标;关于幼儿发展方案质量的信息;实验）和以前未应用于发展中国家幼儿发展的方法（例如，结构模型，在不可观测的代际联系，选择有关方案和异质影响）承诺大幅增加有关幼儿发展的知识。智利是研究幼儿发展的一个特别有趣的背景，因为它在创新社会项目方面处于领先地位，一些独特的项目在其他地方没有（例如，代金券）、上述丰富的数据以及对其他中等收入和高收入国家可能产生的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Early childhood development (ECD) -- cognitive, non-cognitive and physical health -- of pre-school age children is increasingly seen as critical in health and socioeconomic well-being later in life. But over 240 million children under 5y of age in developing countries do not reach their developmental potential. Advocacy for and resources devoted to ECD have increased substantially in developing countries. Yet what is known about impacts of such programs is based on few studies usually with small samples, limited outcome indicators, limited program information, small scale of operation and often problems of interpreting associations as reflecting causal effects. This project promises substantial increases in knowledge of ECD by exploiting a rich new data set with a national representative longitudinal sample of 15,000 children initially 0-5y of age and their families with linked data that permit extensive characterization of the children and their family members and the ECD programs to which they have been exposed in Chile. The Specific Aims are: (1): To enrich a public-use panel data set initiated in 2009 and to be continued at least through 2011 on 15,000 children initially 0-5y of age and their families in a nationally representative sample that is linked to other data (that include economic, health and other relevant information on all family members; child school and national test performance and ECD Center quality) with embedded experiments. (2): To describe age-gender-SES-regional gradients/inequalities in ECD program participation and quality and in ECD outcomes including cognitive development, non-cognitive development and physical health. (3): To analyze ECD program participation. (4): To analyze impacts of ECD programs, including quality and curricular focus, on child cognitive development, non-cognitive development and physical health. (5): To analyze impacts of ECD programs on mothers' time use (e.g., hours worked) and their general life satisfaction and depression. (6): To estimate cost effectiveness and cost-benefit ratios for various interventions to improve ECD to provide better tools for policy makers to make more informed choices among intervention options. (7): To simulate expected impacts of interventions to improve ECD on age-gender-SES-regional gradients/inequalities in ECD access and in cognitive development, non-cognitive development and physical health outcomes. The combination of special data features (e.g., large, nationally-representative sample; linkages to other data sources; indicators of cognitive, non-cognitive and physical development; information on ECD program quality; experiments) and methodologies not applied before to ECD in developing countries (e.g., structural models with intergenerational links in un-observables, selection regarding programs and heterogeneous impacts) promises substantial gains in knowledge about ECD. Chile is a particularly interesting context in which to study ECD because of its leadership in innovative social programs, some unique programs not present elsewhere (e.g., vouchers), rich data described above and possible implications for other middle-income as well as high-income countries.