SEMINAR: Economics Seminar

ABSTRACT: The positive impact of early intervention on children’s cognitive and behavioural outcomes is now well-recognized in the developed world. However, little is known about whether these programs confer similar benefits in developing countries. This paper focuses on the effect of preschool attendance on childhood health outcomes in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. We employ difference-in-differences method to control for selection on time invariant unobservables. Furthermore, allowing for heterogeneity in the impact of preschool attendance using quantile treatment effects, we find a significant negative causal effect that varies across the distribution of child health outcomes. The result seems to be more pronounced among the male children, and is robust to various sensitivity tests.