Targeted early years programmes can have significant benefits for children’s development; however, there are many examples of early interventions that have failed to live up to their promise, particularly when delivered at scale. Understanding the inputs into a successful early years programme is therefore essential to reform existing interventions and guide investment into the most promising programmes. In this paper, we consider the role of a crucial input: workforce effectiveness. We evaluate the degree of heterogeneity in workforce effectiveness in the context of the highly-trained workforce employed by a successful, scaled home visiting programme in England. Using the quasi-random assignment of workers to families for identification, we estimate each worker’s effectiveness in promoting children’s physical, cognitive and socio-emotional development. We find evidence of substantial heterogeneity in workforce effectiveness; for example, a one-standard deviation increase in effectiveness leads to a 0.31SD increase in cognitive performance at age 2, and a 0.23SD increase in socio-emotional development. Despite having access to unusually detailed data on worker characteristics and on process quality, we are only able to explain around 15% of the variation in worker effectiveness. However, mechanisms analysis suggests that reductions in maternal risky behaviour are a particularly important channel for nurses to influence children’s cognitive development, while improvements in maternal mental health are important for socio-emotional development.
Presented by:
Christine Farquharson, Institute for Fiscal Studies
Date & time:
4 Mar 2024 12:30 pm - 4 Mar 2024 13:30 pm
Venue:
In person - to join us online, please contact the seminar series organisers at iserseminars@essex.ac.uk.
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