Abstract
We analyze the effectiveness of the early childhood programme (ECP) in the Netherlands. The programme is designed for 2.5–4 year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds. 37 municipalities received an additional subsidy to expand ECP programmes, which allows us to analyze the effects of the programme within a difference-in-difference-in-differences framework. Most children first enroll in primary schools at age 4 in the Netherlands, but pupils begin to learn reading and mathematics in grade 3 at age 6. We use grade repetition constructed from school registry data from 2008 to 2015 in the first two grades as an indicator of school readiness. Our results show significantly lower grade repetition rates for targeted boys who are in regions that receive the subsidy. Grade repetition drops by 0.8–1.8 percentage points from a mean of 10.5% for the disadvantaged group targeted by the programme.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The exact formula is 1.2 times the number of highly disadvantaged pupils plus 0.3 times the number of moderately disadvantaged pupils minus the total number of pupils times 0.06.
Although schools and municipalities both collect information on parents’ education level for the ECP programme and the school weight scores, it is very likely that not all children who qualify are identified.
We exclude the 4 largest cities from the figure to make the amounts more visible.
Grade retention is generally high in the Netherlands. The Inspectorate of Education raised concerns about the high rates in a 2012 report but the focus was largely on secondary schools. There does not appear to be any concrete policies taken to reduce grade repetition in grades 1 and 2 during the treatment period (Inspectorate of Education 2012).
Their inclusion makes the estimated effects slightly smaller. The absolute value of the coefficients for the subsidy variables become smaller by around 0.00015 in the main model, which makes the coefficient insignificant at the 10% level. The effects remain statistically significant for boys and the restricted sample of municipalities.
While the national policy is to target children with weight status and the budget determined based on the number of children with weight status, most municipalities officially target more children than just those with weight status (Beekhoven et al. 2012). The most common additional criterium used for targeting is language spoken at home. When we exclude pupils with two non-Dutch parents and no weight status from the sample, the coefficient estimate in the full sample model is around 0.005 larger.
2013 subsidy amounts differ very little from 2012 as seen in Fig. 2.
If we drop 3 more of the remaining treated municipalities with highest municipal weight scores from model 4 in Table 4, the DDD coefficient for 2013 (− 0.0194) remains statistically significant at the 10% level. Dropping a further 4th municipality results in statistically insignificant effects but the point estimate remains negative at − 0.0179 for 2013. At that point, the number of treated children seems too small to find statistically significant effects.
References
Beekhoven, S., Jepma, I., & Leseman, K. P. (2012). Landelijke Monitor Voor-en Vroegschoolse Educatie 2011. SARDES.
Bennett, J., Gordon, J., & Edelmann, J. (2012). Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) for children from disadvantaged backgrounds: Findings from a European literature review and two case studies Final Report for the Director–General. Brussels, Belgium: European Commission, Directorate–General for Education and Culture.
Bertrand, M., Duflo, E., & Mullainathan, S. (2004). How much should we trust difference-in-differences estimates? The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119, 249–275.
Bertrand, M., & Pan, J. (2013). The trouble with boys: Social influences and the gender gap in disruptive behavior. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 5, 32–64.
Bitler, M. P., Hoynes, H. W., & Domina, T. (2014). Experimental evidence on distributional effects of Head Start. Working paper 20434. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Bradbury, B., Corak, M., Waldfogel, J., & Washbrook, E. (2015). Too many children left behind: The US achievement gap in comparative perspective. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Bruggers, I., Driessen, G., & Gesthuizen, M. (2014). Voor- en vroegschoolse voorzieningen, effectief of niet? Early childhood facilities: Effective or ineffective? Mens en Maatschappij, 89, 117.
Campbell, F. A., Ramey, C. T., Pungello, E., Sparling, J., & Miller-Johnson, S. (2002). Early childhood education: Young adult outcomes from the Abecedarian Project. Applied Developmental Science, 6, 42–57.
Cascio, E. U., & Schanzenbach, D. W. (2013). The impacts of expanding access to high-quality preschool education. Working paper 19735. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Lin, F., Majerovitz, J., & Scuderi, B. (2016). Childhood environment and gender gaps in adulthood. Working paper 21936. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Deming, D. (2009). Early childhood intervention and life-cycle skill development: evidence from Head Start. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1, 111–134.
Elango, S., Garca, J. L., Heckman, J. J., & Hojman, A. (2015). Early childhood education. Working paper 21766. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Felfe, C., Nollenberger, N., & Rodríguez-Planas, N. (2012). Can’t buy mommy’s love? Universal childcare and childrens long-term cognitive development. Journal of Population Economics, 28, 393–422.
Fukkink, R., Jilink, L., & Oostdam, R. (2015). Met een blink op de toekomst: Een meta-analyse van de effecten van VVE op de ontwikkeling van kinderen in Nederland. Hogeschool van Amsterdam.
Havnes, T., & Mogstad, M. (2011). No child left behind: subsidized child care and children’s long-run outcomes. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 3, 97–129.
Havnes, T., & Mogstad, M. (2015). Is universal child care leveling the playing field? Journal of Public Economics, 127, 100–114.
Heckman, J. J., Moon, S. H., Pinto, R., Savelyev, P. A., & Yavitz, A. (2010). The rate of return to the HighScope Perry Preschool Program. Journal of Public Economics, 94, 114–128.
Inspectorate of Education (2012). State of education: Headlines from the education report 2011/2012. Ministry of Education.
Jacob, B. A., & Lefgren, L. (2009). The effect of grade retention on high school completion. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3, 33–58.
Kautz, T., Heckman, J. J., Diris, R., Ter Weel, B., & Borghans, L. (2014). Fostering and measuring skills: Improving cognitive and non-cognitive skills to promote lifetime success. Working paper 20749. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Kline, P., & Walters, C. (2015). Evaluating public programs with close substitutes: The case of Head Start. Working paper 21658. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Lee, D. S., & Lemieux, T. (2010). Regression discontinuity designs in economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 48, 281–355.
Ludwig, J., & Miller, D. L. (2007). Does Head Start improve children’s life chances? Evidence from a regression discontinuity design. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122, 159–208.
Manacorda, M. (2012). The cost of grade retention. Review of Economics and Statistics, 94, 596–606.
Melhuish, E., Belsky, J., Leyland, A. H., & Barnes, J. (2008). Effects of fully-established Sure Start Local Programmes on 3-year-old children and their families living in England: A quasi-experimental observational study. The Lancet, 372, 1641–1647.
Nores, M., & Barnett, W. S. (2010). Benefits of early childhood interventions across the world: (Under) investing in the very young. Economics of Education Review, 29, 271–282.
OCW (2014a). Progress report on the development of the ECP in M37. Ministry of Education.
OCW (2014b). Quality Monitor for ECP in the 37 large cities in 2013 and 2014. Ministry of Education.
Puma, M., Bell, S., Cook, R., Heid, C., Broene, P., Jenkins, F. (2012). Third grade follow-up to the Head Start impact study: Final report. OPRE report 2012-45. Administration for Children & Families.
Puma, M., Bell, S., Cook, R., Heid, C., & Lopez, M. (2005). Head Start impact study: First year findings. US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Washington, DC.
Raver, C. C., Jones, S. M., Li-Grining, C. P., Metzger, M., Champion, K. M., & Sardin, L. (2008). Improving preschool classroom processes: Preliminary findings from a randomized trial implemented in Head Start settings. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23, 10–26.
Van Vuuren, D., & Van der Wiel, K. (2015). Zittenblijven in het primair en voortgezet onderwijs: Een inventarisatie van de voor- en nadelen. Centraal Planbureau.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
We would like to thank Karen van der Wiel, Daniel van Vuuren, Bas ter Weel, Wolter Hassink, Marc van der Steeg, Sander Gerritsen, Dinand Webbink, Magne Mogstad, Egbert Jongen and Thomas van Huizen for their comments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Akgündüz, Y.E., Heijnen, S. Impact of Funding Targeted Pre-school Interventions on School Readiness: Evidence from the Netherlands. De Economist 166, 155–178 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10645-018-9314-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10645-018-9314-2