Early childhood development through an integrated program : evidence from the Philippines

This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled Early childhood development through an integrated program : evidence from the Philippines, conducted in 1999 in Philippines. The study observed the impact of early childhood development (ECD) to control a variety of observed characteristics measured at the municipality, barangay, household, and child level and unobserved fixed characteristics, with differential impacts by age of children and duration of exposure to the program on the child level. For children exposed to the program there is a statistically significant positive impact on outcomes related to child cognitive, social, motor skills, language development, and short term nutritional status. The program impacts tend to increase with duration. Younger children experienced greater impacts. Funding for the study derived from the National Institutes of Health or Fogarty International Center, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research, the Global Development Network, the Department of Social Welfare and Development of the Government of the Philippines, the World Bank Research Support Budget, and NICHD postdoctoral training fellowship at the University of Michigan.