Impacts of a Large-Scale Parenting Program: Experimental Evidence from Chile

• In Event: What happens next? Sustained impacts of early childhood interventions in low- and middle-income countries

Abstract

There exists strong evidence that there are high potential returns to early childhood programs, especially when they are targeted to disadvantaged families. The success of many early childhood interventions often relies on their ability to enhance the quality of parent and child interactions and then home environment in a sustained way. However, to date there is very little evidence of interventions that are implemented at scale in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) settings and that are able to sustain impacts in parental behaviors and children’s developmental outcomes over time. “Nadie es Perfecto” (NEP hereafter) is a program that aims to improve the quantity and quality of parental investments in children by providing parents with the information, motivation, and self-confidence to implement better parenting behaviors. NEP is a scaled-up, publicly provided parenting program for caregivers with children of 0-5 years old who are beneficiaries of the primary health care system and therefore are generally poor. The program is fully integrated with other health, education, and welfare programs and is delivered through local health centers across the whole country of Chile. NEP is delivered by trained health workers who organize weekly group sessions with caregivers using an experiential learning model through group discussions.
In this paper, we present experimental medium-term impacts of Nadie es Perfecto (NEP) in parental behaviors and beliefs, as well as in children’s cognitive and socioemotional outcomes, measured roughly three years after the end of the program completion. In this large-scale Randomized Control Trial, two different versions of this program were randomly offered to potential participants: NEP-Basico (NEP-B) and NEP-Intensivo (NEP-I). NEP-B consists of eight weekly group parenting sessions, while NEP-I supplements these with two additional sessions where caregivers can interact with their children and receive feedback on their practices. A total of 18 households in 162 public health centers across the whole country were randomly selected either into three treatment arms: NEP-B, NEP-I, and a Control group, forming a total sample of 2,916 households and 3,597 children. We administered a baseline survey in 2011, right before parents in the treatment groups received the invitation to participate in the program. We re-surveyed the same households and children in 2014.
We show that, three years after caregivers completed participation in the program, this program had large impacts in the outcomes of participant families and their children. Children whose parents participated in NEP-I have cognitive scores which are 0.42 standard deviations (SD) above children whose parents were not offered to participate in NEP-I. We document similar impacts for socioemotional outcomes (0.38 SD). Impacts of NEP-I on standardized indices of parents’ beliefs and behaviors are of about the same magnitude as those reported for child outcomes. NEP-B has smaller impacts on children and parents than NEP-I. In line with international evidence, our results from the impact evaluation of NEP show larger effects for children from poor and more disadvantaged backgrounds.

Authors

• Pedro Carneiro

• Emanuela Galasso, World Bank - District of Columbia

• Italo Lopez Garcia, University of Southern California
  Presenting Author

• Miguel Cordero, Universidad de Chile

• Paula Bedregal