What is the Added Value of Preschool? Long-Term Impacts and Interactions with a Health Intervention

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Event Type: 
Seminar Series
Date and Time: 
Monday, March 27, 2017
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Speaker: 
Abstract: 

We study the impact of targeted high quality preschool over the life cycle and across generations, and examine its interaction with an infant health intervention. Using administrative data from Denmark together with variation in the timing of program implementation between 1933 and 1960, we find lasting benefits of access to high quality preschool at age 3 on adult educational attainment and survival beyond age 65. Further, the benefits persist to the next generation, who obtain higher education by age 25. However, exposure to a nurse home visiting program in infancy reduces the added value of preschool. The positive effect of preschool is lowered by 88 percent for years of schooling (of the first generation) and by 80 percent for survival past age 65.