Preprimary Education and Early Childhood Development: Evidence from Government Schools in Rural Kenya

Abstract

We provide evidence on the link between enrollment in public preschool and child vocabulary, a critical precursor to early literacy. We measure early childhood development among both in-school and out-of-school children in Kenya, allowing us to examine the association between preschool enrollment and cognitive outcomes. Children in our sample are more likely to start school at age three rather than age four if they live within a few hundred meters of the nearest primary school. Three-year-olds living closer to the school also have stronger vocabulary skills, though a similar pattern does not exist among older children. Using proximity to school as an instrument for preprimary enrollment, we find that preprimary enrollment raises mother tongue receptive vocabulary by more than one standard deviation at age three, but does not impact vocabulary at later ages.

Other versions

Link to published paper in the Journal of Development Economics

Previous version appears as CGD Working Paper 661, October 2023

Joint with Pamela Jakiela, Heather Knauer, and Lia C. H. Fernald

Data

Data and analysis files: (hosted at the Harvard Dataverse)

Media

Blog at CGD: Preschools: They’re Good! But They Could Be Better

Other information

JEL codes: O12, I25, J24, H52

Recommended citation: Jakiela, Pamela, Owen Ozier, Lia C. H. Fernald, and Heather A. Knauer. "Preprimary Education and Early Childhood Development: Evidence from Government Schools in Rural Kenya." Journal of Development Economics 171 (2024): 103337.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103337