Human Capital at Home: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in the Philippines (WP-24-28)
Noam Angrist, Sarah Kabay, Dean Karlan, Lincoln Lau, and Kevin Wong
Children spend most of their time at home in their early years, yet efforts to promote human capital at home in many low- and middle-income settings remain limited. The researchers conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an intervention which encourages parents and caregivers to foster human capital accumulation among their children between ages 3 and 5, with a focus on math and phonics skills. Children gain 0.52 and 0.51 standard deviations relative to the control group on math and phonics tests, respectively (p<0.001). A year later effects persist, but math gains dissipate to 0.15 (p=0.06) and phonics to 0.13 (p=0.12). Effects appear to be mediated largely through instructional support by parents and not other parent investment mechanisms, such as more positive parent-child interactions or additional time spent on education at home beyond the intervention. The results show that parents can be effective conduits of educational instruction even in low-resource settings.