because the services provided through the ECED project seem to supplement limited household resources of disadvantaged children and to help such children reach their potential in many important domains of child development.

# **7. Analyzing impacts for the later beneficiaries – the 1-year-olds**

Next we turn to the impact of the cohort of children who were the 1-year-olds at baseline and did not become eligible for project-provided services until two years after the project began.

# **7.1. Data and descriptive statistics**

The study interviewed the caregivers (again, usually mothers) of 3,185 children in the 1- year-old-cohort at the outset. Table 8 contains a description of this sample. At endline, caregivers of 2,842 were reached and able to provide information on their children’s enrollment in early childhood services. Of these, we obtained developmental outcome data for 2,725 children while 2,457 provided information on all covariates considered in the analysis. By the endline, this cohort is approximately 4.8 years old, and 37.4% come from poorer households. 45.5 percent of the children had mothers with at most an elementary school education. When they were 1 (at baseline) 21.4 percent were moderately stunted and 5 percent were severely stunted. 24.7 percent were moderately wasted and 8.9 percent were severely wasted.<sup>10</sup> Lastly the parents of these children reported parenting practices that were 0.17 standard deviations above the mean.

# **7.2. Empirical strategy**

Had there been no deviations from the design and had villages chosen to offer services for children of all ages, our statistical analysis would have compared the outcomes of children in Batches 1 and 3. However, we are unable to show substantial differences between outcomes for children in Batches 1 and 3 since most communities decided to invest project funds in services which catered to children aged 3-6 rather than including services for 0-3. Thus the children in the 1-year-old cohort were too young to benefit from an increased provision of services when the project was first phased in (See also Figure 2).

We confirm this through instrumental variables analyses reported in Tables 9-12. As in the case of the 4-year-old cohort, these models are estimated using Equations 1.1 and 1.2. Across the range of outcome variables considered, while all point estimates are in the expected direction, there is no evidence of any statistical difference between children in batches 1 and 3.

In order to estimate whether or not the project had any impact on children in the younger cohort, we switch approaches and instead compare these children to children living in villages which never received the project.

To do so, two models were estimated. The unadjusted model controls only for the district to which each village belonged. The adjusted model added covariates for child, household, and background characteristics to the unadjusted model. The main coefficients of interest in both models are the coefficients on indicator variables for whether or not the child is from a village in

> 10 Stunting and wasting are defined using the 2007 World Health Organization Child Growth Charts.

21