Bernal Raquel, Attanasio Orazio, Peña Ximena, Vera-Hernández Marcos
Universidad de los Andes, Department of Economics, Centro de Estudios sobre Desarrollo Económico, Calle 19A # 1-37E, Edificio W, Bogotá, Colombia.
University College London, Department of Economics, Gower Street, London WC1E6BT, UK.
Early Child Res Q. 2019 Apr-Jun;47:418-431. doi: 10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.08.005.
Colombia's national early childhood strategy launched in 2011 aimed at improving the quality of childcare services offered to socio-economically vulnerable children, and included the possibility that children and their childcare providers could transfer from non-parental family daycare units to large childcare centers in urban areas. This study seeks to understand whether the offer to transfer and the actual transfer from one program to the other had an impact on child cognitive and socioemotional development, and nutrition, using a cluster-randomized control trial with a sample of 2767 children between the ages of 6 and 60 months located in 14 cities in Colombia. The results indicate a negative effect of this initiative on cognitive development, a positive effect on nutrition, and no statistically significant effect of the intervention on socioemotional development. We also explored the extent to which these impacts might be explained by differences in the quality of both services during the transition, and report that quality indicators are low in both programs but are significantly worse in centers compared to community nurseries.
哥伦比亚2011年推出的国家幼儿战略旨在提高为社会经济弱势儿童提供的托儿服务质量，其中包括儿童及其托儿服务提供者可从非亲族家庭日托单位转至城市地区大型托儿中心的可能性。本研究旨在通过一项整群随机对照试验，以哥伦比亚14个城市的2767名6至60个月大儿童为样本，了解转至另一项目的提议以及实际转至另一项目的情况是否对儿童的认知、社会情感发展以及营养状况产生影响。结果表明，该举措对认知发展有负面影响，对营养状况有积极影响，且干预措施对社会情感发展无统计学上的显著影响。我们还探讨了这些影响在多大程度上可能由过渡期间两种服务质量的差异所解释，并报告称两个项目的质量指标都很低，但与社区托儿所相比，中心的指标明显更差。
