
A 20-year Follow-Up to an Early Childhood Stimulation Program in Jamaica - okfine
https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/20-year-follow-early-childhood-stimulation-program-jamaica
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sytelus
Method:

 _The stimulation intervention included weekly home visits by trained
community health workers, who encouraged and instructed mothers on how to play
and interact with their children. For the nutrition intervention, health
workers distributed weekly nutritional supplements to homes, as well as
additional cornmeal and skimmed milk powder to discourage sharing of the
supplement with other family members._

Result:

 _Most notably, children who received stimulation achieved 0.6 more years of
schooling, or 5.6 percent more schooling, than participating children who did
not receive stimulation, and were nearly three times as likely to have had
some college-level education._

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Am I missing something in the wide gap between those figures - Children who
got intervention X stayed in school for ~7 months longer _and were also three
times more likely to start college_

The 5% more and the 300% more just seem wildly out of kilter

(It kind of makes sense - if all your peers stop school at 16 and you stay for
7 months or more, suddenly getting to college is a much easier step.) I think
i am just surprised by how surprised i am

~~~
dalbasal
They're not comparable on the same scale.

Say... Kids get 10.5 years schooling on average in neighborhood A. 12 years in
neighborhood B. That is a 1.5 years or 15% difference. In a 12 grade system,
this is the best possible result implying a 100% completion rate.

Neighborhood A sends 10% of all kids to college. Neighborhood B sends 50% of
all kids to college. That's a 500% difference.

This example seems pretty plausible. A neighborhood where an average kid makes
it halfway through 10th grade probably sends _a lot_ fewer kids to college
than a neighborhood with a 100% completion rate for grade 12.

~~~
lostcolony
This. Especially since if Jamaica is anything like the US, dropping out prior
to age 16 is illegal.

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gwern
Another Heckman study. Oh, I thought this sounded familiar:
[http://andrewgelman.com/2013/11/05/how-much-do-we-trust-
this...](http://andrewgelman.com/2013/11/05/how-much-do-we-trust-this-claim-
that-early-childhood-stimulation-raised-earnings-by-42/)

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oz
I'm pretty sure this study was mentioned in a recent episode of EconTalk,
where the guest was talking about statistical significance, p-hacking, etc.
I'm Jamaican, so I perked up when it came up.

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pastage
Three times as likely to get college level education is amazing, children and
parents really are the future.

~~~
olfactory
Nurture is the major factor in nearly every aspect of human achievement.
Alternative explanations justify genocide, neglect, and let adults off the
hook.

~~~
ibeckermayer
Genocide? Umm, care to explain how that follows?

~~~
owlmirror
If some part of the gap in achievement is genetically determined (which by all
measurements is the case.) than there is no way to close that gap. Children
from poor parents stay poor, poor communities can not move up etc. What's
proposed is that the only possible way eliminating differences is eliminating
people (in either direction.). Of course this does not infact justify genocide
or any of the sort, but that's the argument.

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pkAbstract
I'm surprised that the psychosocial intervention was as effective as it was,
however I expected the nutrition arm of the trial to fare better. I guess
interacting with intelligent and engaging adults as a child really has long-
term developmental benefits.

~~~
wolco
nutrition is a relative concept. Cornmeal and skin milk are not going to
produce amazing result by themselves.

~~~
pkAbstract
The cornmeal and skim milk was provided to the baby's family in order to
discourage them from distributing the baby's formula:

"The nutritional intervention (groups 2 and 3) consisted of giving 1 kg of
formula containing 66% of daily-recommended energy (calories), protein, and
micronutrients provided weekly for 24 months"

The article implies that the families likely split the formula for multiple
members, thus diminishing any effect it may have had on the baby's
development.

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airstrike
Education should be society's #1 priority. I find it truly baffling that we
have yet to agree on this -- or, if by some reason you think we _have_ agreed,
that we haven't acted on it.

~~~
ismail
Does education = learning, and does education result in knowledge, does
education = benefit to society?

The reason I ask is: we did an exercise recently where we had to go through
the various assumptions for a product. The assumptions we made were

1: education = better outcomes

2: more education = better

3: formal higher education is necessary for getting a job

4: people actually need to get jobs

I am not convinced these are true.

~~~
emj
Then you have to ask yourself where that belief comes from for each item try
hard to disprove it. It is only based on opinion to a certain point.

~~~
abecedarius
The book I linked to in another comment collects relevant studies. To try to
summarize, a degree does seem to matter to getting a better job (especially a
bachelor's or a high school diploma); but an incremental year of schooling
matters disproportionately less, and the bulk of the benefit was in the degree
(the sheepskin effect); a more-educated populace does not make a country
richer, among current nations; and intangible benefits are dubious when you
measure the outcomes on adults, whether it's knowledge of facts, skills,
preferences for more-elevated art, or even political indoctrination. The idea
that the economic benefit of education is mostly signaling makes sense of the
fact that people consume more and more schooling in the face of its
ineffectiveness.

