The impact of a Caribbean home-visiting child development program on cognitive skills

• We estimate the impact of a home-based intervention on cognitive outcomes of young children.
• The program does not affect the cognitive development of the average child or the older birth cohort.
• The program significantly improves early reading and writing skills of the younger cohort.
• No impact is found on the language development of either cohort.
• The findings suggest that home-based programs may have an early window of opportunities.

This paper provides a short-term impact evaluation of a home-visiting Early Child Development (ECD) program in the Caribbean aimed at vulnerable children from birth to three years. The analysis is based on a quasi-experimental research design including approximately four hundred children in treatment and comparable control communities. The differences-in-differences methodology estimates intention-to-treat effects. One year after implementation, we find no significant effects on the cognitive development of the average child, but pronounced differences by birth cohort. The program has significantly improved Fine Motor Skills and Visual Reception scores, related to early reading and writing abilities, of the youngest children aged below 18 months at program start. There is no program impact on the older cohort, whose cognitive development appears to be more strongly correlated with center-based ECD services. Language development has not improved for either cohort. The findings suggest that an early window of opportunities may exist for home-based programs.