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Starting Early: Returns on Kindergarten Attendance in Indonesia
Posthumus, Daniel
Posthumus, Daniel
Abstract
Indonesia is a rapidly developing economy, having averaged 5.26% economic growth from 2000 to 2019; over the same time, it has achieved near-universal primary school attendance. However, there are concerns about the quality of Indonesian education, with no improvement in standardized test scores between 2012 and 2022. Early childhood interventions are a critical part of human capital accumulation and skills- building, and the efficacy of interventions such as kindergarten in developing countries like Indonesia is under-studied. Using data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) and Village Potential Statistics (PODES), I examine the effects of kindergarten on educational outcomes in Indonesia, focusing on schooling and cognitive performance. My empirical strategy entails ordinary least-squares (OLS), mother fixed-effects (FE), and instrumental variable (IV) estimation, where my instrument is the number of kindergartens per 10,000 individuals in each locality. I find that kindergarten has a significant positive association with schooling, associated with an additional 1.89 years of education. Additionally, I find evidence that kindergarten’s positive association with educational outcomes fades out as time passes, there being little to no evidence of significant positive effects after the conclusion of junior high school. I also find little to no evidence that attending kindergarten has a significant association with performance on cognitive tests–suggesting there is a gap between schooling and skills learned in the classroom. My results motivate a closer look at this gap, as well as exploring the effects of kindergarten attendance on earnings or social outcomes such as delinquency.
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2024-05-01
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Economics