Short and long run effects of the early childhood development: field work and analysis of longitudinal data in a municipality in São Paulo

• Grant number: 11/13169-8
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: March 01, 2012
• End date: February 28, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Economics
• Principal Investigator: Elaine Toldo Pazello
• Grantee: Elaine Toldo Pazello
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade de Ribeirão Preto (FEARP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Cristine Campos de Xavier Pinto ; Daniel Domingues dos Santos ; Fabiana de Felicio

Abstract

There are few studies about the impact of early childhood development in Brazil on child´s development. Due to the lack of data, these studies present evidence only on the impact of daycare and preschool on the cognitive skill of the students and these evidences are not reliable. In this project, we propose to collect longitudinal data that contains information not only on test scores of the students in grades after preschool, but also information about non-cognitive skills of the students. In addition, this data will not contain only the information about when the students start school like most part of the data sets in Brazil, but it will also contain information about which school and with which professor the students took each year of daycare and preschool. We will do a follow up of the data collected by Felício et al in 2007. Felício et al collected data about all the students in the 2nd grade of elementary school in Sertãozinho, and they also applied a literacy test to these students. The data collected by Felício et al is unique in the sense that they have information about how many the students spent at the daycare and preschool institutions, and not only if they enter school at daycare or preschool. In the follow-up, we added more information about early childhood education in the questionnaires; apply a cognitive exam to the same students and a no cognitive test. With these longitudinal data, we will do two papers that present reliable estimations about the impact of early childhood education on daycare and preschool on cognitive and non-cognitive abilities of the students in Sertãozinho. (AU)