| Daphna Bassok
Stanford University
Do Hispanic children benefit more from preschool? The role of differential selection processes across race and ethnicity in explaining the link between preschool and cognitive development
FINAL REPORT
A large body of research suggests that the effects of preschool are particularly pronounced among low-income children. Several recent studies also find that the effects of attending preschool vary by race, with Hispanic children experiencing the greatest gains. These new findings about racial differences are difficult to interpret because the likelihood of enrolling a child in preschool varies substantially across groups. Only 43 percent of Hispanic children aged 3-5 attend some form of center care compared to 59 percent of white children and 66 percent of black children. This paper examines both the process by which families make child care decisions and the causal impact of this care. I use newly-released data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Birth Cohort) and a multinomial propensity score matching technique. After accounting for differential selection, I still find meaningful differences in the magnitude of preschool effects across racial groups. However, these differences are eliminated when I limit analysis to children in poverty. All poor children, irrespective of race, appear to benefit substantially from preschool. In contrast, among a non-poor sample, I find that black children benefit significantly more from preschool than their white or Hispanic counterparts. The findings from this paper are particularly policy-relevant today as many states are considering or implementing ’Äúuniversal preschool’Äù interventions to replace more highly-targeted preschool programs. Reliably estimating differential responses to preschool will help policy-makers understand whether early childhood interventions can realistically be expected to narrow socio-economic and racial achievement gaps when public programs are widely available.
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