endline the children who were enrolled came from relatively better-off backgrounds. Children who were never-enrolled in any type of service were generally the poorest children in either cohort.

For this confluence of reasons, we analyze the impacts on the two cohorts of children separately below. Section 6 describes the approach and results for the early beneficiaries – the 4- year-olds while Section 7 describes the approach and results for the later beneficiaries – the 1- year-olds. Each section considers three broad sets of outcomes: enrollment rates, duration of enrollment and child development outcomes – measured using the EDI and the SDQ.

# **6. Analyzing impacts for the early beneficiaries – the 4-year-olds**

We begin our analysis of the impacts of project services with the children who were in the 4-year-old cohort at baseline and were therefore age-eligible to participate in the services as soon as they were available in their villages.

# **6.1. Data and Descriptive Statistics**

Table 5 shows the descriptive statistics for four-year-old children who were assessed in all three periods. The table presents three sets of variables. The first set of variables includes whether or not children were enrolled in different types of ECED programs or elementary school each survey period, plus how many months the children were enrolled. As expected, when children got older, the rates and total months of enrollment in various programs increased. Particularly, the enrollment rate for project playgroups increased from 11.7% in 2009, to 24.5% in 2010, and to 31.8% in 2013. In all three years, the enrollment rates in project playgroups are larger than those in non-project playgroups. As children got older, enrollment rates in kindergarten also increased and surpassed enrollment rates of project playgroups in 2010 and 2013. As discussed before, this is expected because playgroups typically target three to four year old children and kindergarten targets five to six year old children before they enter primary school. In 2013, about 82.5% of children in the sample had been enrolled in some type of preschool program. The average duration was about 15 months after accounting for children who never enrolled. The enrollment rates in elementary schools were none or small in 2009 and 2010, but were near universal in 2013, when children were 7 or 8 years old, because children usually begin elementary school at age 6.

The second set of variables includes child development outcomes as measured by the EDI and the SDQ. As expected, as children got older between baseline and midline their development also improved. However, there was some regression in EDI scores from midline to endline. This regression is because we used the long-form EDI questionnaire at endline (more questions allowing for better interpretation of questions and a more valid assessment of development). Our Difference-in-Differences method, with time-trend dummies, should control for this type of measurement error inherent in using different questionnaires (Heckman et al. 1999).

The third set of descriptive statistics includes variables related to child and household background. Children’s age, household size, household wealth Z-scores and parenting scores are time-varying variables, while mothers’ education and children’s gender are time invariant variables. It is notable that about 50% of mothers have primary school education or less. Children were on average about 4.4 years old at baseline, 5.5 years old at midline, and 8.1 years old at endline.

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