Child care for childhood and business development

Child care for childhood and business development Can supporting pre-school education improve (i) educational outcomes for the children and (ii) business development for the mothers? In order to shed light on these questions, we have conducted a field experiment in collaboration with BRAC Uganda where we offer child-care support and a cash grant to a representative sample of women in Uganda. The treatment effects will be measured against a control group, which receives no support from the project. We explore impact of the treatments on the children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills, and on the mothers' labor supply and business development. Other studies have found that child care has a positive impact on children's development and mother's employment decisions. No study, however, has explored these questions in Sub-Saharan Africa, and no study has used a randomized control methodology to do so. In this way, our project is ground breaking both in the choice of geographical context and in the choice of method. Another strength of our project is that it aims at measuring spillover and general equilibrium effects of the interventions, which are usually ignored in field experiments. Our focus is on the family, and an important dimension of spillovers is on other family members, that is, whether childcare or cash grants targeting the mother can also have an impact on fathers, older siblings, etc. We have conducted a census of around 4000 households in Uganda, and a baseline survey of around 3000 households (February 2019), and based on this, included around 1500 households for our project, evenly distributed across the four treatment arms: free childcare; cash grant for business development; both free child care and a cash grant; and the control group. We conducted a short-term follow-up study in August 2019 focusing on the households, and in November 2019 we conducted a follow-up study of the children's development. In February 2020, that is, one year after the interventions, we carried out a follow-up survey focusing on the households. Overall, our findings suggest that free childcare can be an effective policy to promote business development among mothers, by increasing their productivity at work. The childcare intervention was in fact as effective as a cash grant framed as investment support in increasing business revenues. Moreover, the childcare treatment had the additional benefit of improving early literacy and motoric development for the children. In March 2020, the pandemic led to a comprehensive lockdown in Uganda. Since then, we have conducted five rounds of interviews with the participants in our project, the first two by phone and the last two face-to-face. The data collected through these interviews allow us to analyze the effect of the pandemic and lockdown on households in Uganda, and whether a cash grant (which is one of our interventions) could make a difference. We find that the cash grant was effective in helping households cope through the pandemic, and with sustained positive effects on income and savings over time. As a consequence of the pandemic, we had to reconsider some of our plans. The initial ambition was to offer two years of preschool and track the children and their families over a prolonged period of time. School closures made this impossible. With the reopening of schools in early 2022, we have launched a study on the parents', and other household members', involvement in children's education. We do so by offering workbooks in math and language, and investigate impact on time use, parenting styles, and educational outcomes for the children.

In the main paper from this project, we explore impact of the treatments on the children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills, and on the mothers' labor supply and business development. Other studies have found that childcare has a positive impact on children's development and mother's employment decisions. No study, however, has explored these questions in Sub-Saharan Africa, and no study has used a randomized control methodology to do so. In this way, our project is ground-breaking both in the choice of geographical context and in the choice of method. Another strength of our project is that it aims at measuring spillover and general equilibrium effects of the interventions, which are usually ignored in field experiments. Our focus is on the family, and an important dimension of spillovers is on other family members, that is, whether childcare or cash grants targeting the mother can also have an impact on fathers, older siblings, etc. Overall, our findings suggest that free childcare can be an effective policy to promote business development among mothers, by increasing their productivity at work. The childcare intervention was in fact as effective as a cash grant framed as investment support in increasing business revenues. Moreover, the childcare treatment had the additional benefit of improving early literacy and motoric development for the children. In addition to the main report, we also investigate the impact of cash grants during covid. In March 2020, the pandemic led to a comprehensive lockdown in Uganda. Since then, we have conducted five rounds of interviews with the participants in our project, the first two by phone and the last two face-to-face. The data collected through these interviews allow us to analyze the effect of the pandemic and lockdown on households in Uganda, and whether a cash grant (which is one of our interventions) could make a difference. We find that the cash grant was effective in helping households cope through the pandemic, and with sustained positive effects on income and savings over time. Finally, we have conducted a study on parents', and other household members', involvement in children's education. We do so by offering workbooks in math and language, and investigate impact on time use, parenting styles, and educational outcomes for the children. We are currently collecting follow-up data on this project.

Can supporting pre-school education improve (i) educational outcomes for the children and (ii) business development for the mothers? These are the two key research questions in our project proposal. In this way, our project incorporates two priority areas in the NORGLOBAL call for proposals: Business development and job creation, and Global education. Other studies have found that child care has a positive impact on children's development and mother's employment decisions. No study, however, has explored these questions in Sub-Saharan Africa, and no study has used a randomized control methodology to do so. We propose a field experiment in collaboration with BRAC Uganda where we offer incentives to female entrepreneurs with small children to send their children to quality child care, and explore impact of this treatment on both the children's development and on the business development of the mother-entrepreneurs. In this way, our project is ground breaking both in the choice of geographical context and in the choice of method used to investigate these questions. Moreover, our project adds to the literature by exploring possible interaction effects between child care and business training for business development. Finally, it addresses potential spillover and general equilibrium effects of the intervention, which are usually ignored by business development and job creation programmes.