Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/252256 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 15132
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper uses random assignment to estimate the causal impacts on child skills of a widely emulated early childhood home visiting program. We show the feasibility of replicating it at scale. We estimate vectors of latent skills for individual children and compare treatments and controls. The program substantially improves child language and cognitive, fine motor, and social-emotional skills. We go beyond reporting treatment effects as unweighted item scores. We determine whether the program affects the latent skills generating correct answers to lists of test items and how the program affects the mapping from skills to item scores. Enhancements in latent skills explain most of the conventional treatment effects for language and cognition. The program operates primarily by improving skills and not by improving how effectively skills are used. The program barely changes the map from latent skills to item test scores.
Subjects: 
experiment
scaling
mechanisms
home visiting programs
measurement
JEL: 
J13
Z18
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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