Parental Beliefs, Investments, and Child Development: Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment

Abstract

This paper experimentally estimates medium term impacts of a large-scale and lowcost parenting program targeting poor families in Chile. Households in 162 public health centers were randomly assigned to three groups: a control group, a second group that was offered eight weekly group parenting sessions, and a third group that was offered the same eight group sessions plus two sessions of guided interactions between parents and children focused on responsive play and dialogic reading. In spite of its short duration and intensity, three years after the end of the intervention, the receptive vocabulary and the socio-emotional development of children of families participating in either of the treatment arms improved (by 0.43 and 0.54 standard deviation, respectively) relative to children of nonparticipating families. The treatments also led to improvements in home environments and parenting behaviors of comparable magnitudes, which far outlasted the short duration of the intervention. H43, I10, I20, I38 parenting, early childhood development JEL Classification:

Family Risk and Externalizing Problems in Chilean Children: Mediation by Harsh Parenting and Emotional Support

“…Therefore, in addition to the timely provision of high-quality mental health services for mothers experiencing depression, our results corroborate the need to offer evidencebased dyadic interventions to foster contingent, warm, and sensitive interactions between mother and child. Single-mother families (or families in which the biological father is absent) and low SES families would also benefit from interventions that promote authoritative discipline practices, in line with causal evidence linking harsh discipline as a partial mediating factor of decreasing socioemotional problems in Chilean toddlers and preschoolers (Carneiro et al, 2019;Cova et al, 2019). Future work should continue to study the influence of social support in these three risk groups, because it is possible that all groups would benefit from increased support from extended family, although the exact needs in a given family may depend on the household structure and maternal resources.…”

“…With current interest in personalized medicine and tailoring of interventions to match individual needs, these findings suggest that it may be important for interventions focused on parenting to consider how profiles of family contextual risk could shape the assistance that is most needed by specific families. Over the last few decades, Chile has invested in early child development through the national policy framework “Chile Crece Contigo” (Torres et al, 2018), which has been effective for improving early cognitive and linguistic development (Carneiro et al, 2019). Furthermore, screening for maternal postnatal depression reaches 89% of women using the public health care system.…”

“…Multiple stressors inherent to or compounded by living in contexts of economic disadvantage affect family functioning and children’s EP concurrently and over time (Gach et al, 2018). These are likely causal, based on randomized control trials of cash transfers (Ozer, Fernald, Manley, & Gertler, 2009) and interventions targeting parenting behaviors, dyadic interactions, and parental emotions (Carneiro, Galasso, García, Bedregal, & Cordero, 2019; Cova et al, 2019; McGilloway et al, 2012). Informed by the bioecological model of human development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006), researchers have identified different sociodemographic, parental, and relational risks related to the early onset of child behavior problems (Yoshikawa, Aber, & Beardslee, 2012).…”

“…It is possible that previously documented associations between risks, parenting, and children’s EP may vary within the Chilean population, a country with high prevalence of mental health problems in children and adults. In two independent samples of Chilean children, 28% had mild to clinical levels of affective symptomatology, and EP was the main reason for consultation in Chilean health services (Carneiro et al, 2019; Vicente et al, 2012). Furthermore, the prevalence of depression among new mothers in Chile is 10.2%, but increases close to 40% when combined with symptoms of anxiety and depression (Hahn‐Holbrook, Cornwell‐Hinrichs, & Anaya, 2018; Jadresic, 2014).…”

Early Skill Gap Effects on Long-Run Outcomes and Parental Investments

“…Investments by parents can mediate these long term consequences and there is growing interest in understanding how parents' behavior respond to positive or negative shocks on their children. 1 Parental investments have been linked to beliefs about their returns (e.g., Carneiro et al, 2019;Boneva and Rauh, 2018;Cunha et al, 2013), information frictions (Dizon-Ross, 2019), time and budget constraints (e.g., Bono et al, 2016, Dahl andLochner, 2012), or preferences (e.g., Beuermann and Jackson, 2018;Bharadwaj et al, 2018).…”