Labor market returns to an early childhood stimulation intervention in Jamaica

Abstract

A substantial literature shows that U.S. early childhood interventions have important long-term economic benefits. However, there is little evidence on this question for developing countries. We report substantial effects on the earnings of participants in a randomized intervention conducted in 1986-1987 that gave psychosocial stimulation to growth-stunted Jamaican toddlers. The intervention consisted of weekly visits from community health workers over a 2-year period that taught parenting skills and encouraged mothers and children to interact in ways that develop cognitive and socioemotional skills. The authors reinterviewed 105 out of 129 study participants 20 years later and found that the intervention increased earnings by 25%, enough for them to catch up to the earnings of a nonstunted comparison group identified at baseline (65 out of 84 participants).

Figure 1

Impact of Stimulation Treatment and Catch-up on the Densities of Average Earnings at Age 22 Notes: Panel A presents the log earnings densities for the treatment and control groups using data where earnings of migrant workers who were lost to follow-up were imputed. The control density is the dotted line and the treatment density the solid one. Panel B presents the log earnings densities for the non-stunted comparison and stunted treatment groups, where where earnings of migrant workers who were lost to follow-up were imputed. The treatment group density is the dotted line and the non-stunted group density the solid one. The densities are estimated using Epanechnikov kernels. The treatment densities were estimated with an optimal bandwidth defined as the width that would minimize the mean integrated squared error under the assumption that the data are Gaussian. For purposes of comparability, the same bandwidth used was used for the corresponding control group.