Estimating Causal Intergenerational Impacts of Parent Human Capital Interventions in Kenya

Last registered on January 26, 2020

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Estimating Causal Intergenerational Impacts of Parent Human Capital Interventions in Kenya

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0003995

Initial registration date

March 10, 2019

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

March 10, 2019, 10:36 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

January 26, 2020, 9:27 PM EST

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

Kenya

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Edward Miguel

Affiliation

UC Berkeley

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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Lia Fernald

PI Affiliation

University of California, Berkeley

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PI Name

Patricia Kariger

PI Affiliation

University of California, Berkeley

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PI Name

Michael Walker

PI Affiliation

University of California, Berkeley

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Joan Hicks

PI Affiliation

University of Oklahoma

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Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2018-09-19

End date

2020-12-31

Keywords

Health, Welfare

Additional Keywords

Children, Cognition, Intergenerational

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Abstract

This project will create a dataset consisting of the children of individuals who themselves previously benefited from a randomized health (deworming), vocational education, and/or cash grant intervention. The project will exploit experimental variation to estimate the causal impact of these earlier programs on the health, cognitive development, and other outcomes of the recipients’ children, overcoming the key methodological problem of confounding. The project will survey approximately 7,000 children aged 3-8 of the 7,500 respondents in the Kenya Life Panel Survey (KLPS), creating the new KLPS-Kids dataset, to estimate the extent to which these programs can help break the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Note that a pilot version of this trial was previously registered as AEA RCT #728.

External Link(s)

Earlier pilot version of this trial

Trial to study long-run impacts on parents themselves

Registration Citation

Citation

Fernald, Lia et al. 2020. "Estimating Causal Intergenerational Impacts of Parent Human Capital Interventions in Kenya." AEA RCT Registry. January 26. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.3995-4.0

Former Citation

Fernald, Lia et al. 2020. "Estimating Causal Intergenerational Impacts of Parent Human Capital Interventions in Kenya." AEA RCT Registry. January 26. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/3995/history/61402

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

There is no additional intervention undertaken for this study. The interventions analyzed were conducted during 1998-2003 (deworming), 2009-2011 (vocational training), and 2013-2014 (cash grants).

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2018-09-19

Intervention End Date

2020-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

The primary outcomes are nested within two broad categories of outcomes, Primary Child Outcomes and Child Investment Outcomes. Included in Primary Child Outcomes are four families of outcomes: (1) Language and Cognitive Abilities (drawing on Language, Math & Spatial Abilities, and Executive Function Sub-Indices), (2) Behavior & Socio-Emotional Development, (3) Subjective Health, and (4) Height. Included in Child Investment Outcomes are four families of outcomes: (5) Early Life Health Investments, (6) Home Environment Investments, (7) Schooling Enrollment and Educational Investments, and (8) Child Discipline Strategies.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Construction of these primary outcomes is detailed in our pre-analysis plan.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

We specify a number of secondary outcomes in our pre-analysis plan.

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

The project will survey a randomly selected subset of approximately 7,000 children aged 3-8 of 7,500 adult respondents in the Kenya Life Panel Survey (KLPS), creating the new KLPS-Kids dataset. The original KLPS sample contains Kenyans who participated in one or more of three earlier interventions: a health study known as the Primary School Deworming Program (PSDP; described in detail in Miguel and Kremer, 2004), a vocational training voucher study, or a cash grant intervention (described in detail in Hicks et al., 2015c).

Previous results indicate that primary school deworming led to health, schooling, and labor market gains in young adulthood, even 10 years after the launch of the program (Baird et al., 2016). Although existing work does not find much evidence of substantial labor market gains due to vocational training (Hicks et al., 2015c), findings do suggest substantial self-employment profit gains, at least in the short run, due to unconditional cash grants (Hicks et al., 2015b). These sizeable direct impacts on parents provide a potential channel for the intergenerational impacts on their children that we will study in the current project, although it is possible that gains for parents in unmeasured dimensions might also influence child outcomes.

In order to measure the impacts on the recipients’ children, this project will create locally appropriate versions of both standard and innovative survey instruments designed to measure various domains of development among children aged 3-5 and 6-8. Since the selection of beneficiaries for the PSDP, vocational training voucher, and cash grants were randomized, the data will enable the estimation of causal impacts of these programs on recipients’ children’s outcomes, overcoming the key methodological problem of confounding.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

The randomization performed for the PSDP is described in Miguel et al. (2014), "Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities,Data User's Guide", Center for Effective Global Action Working Paper #40. The randomization method for the vocational training and cash grants interventions is described in Hicks et al., 2015c.

Randomization Unit

The adults were randomized into the PSDP at the school level, and were randomized into the vocational training voucher and cash grants interventions at the individual level. Adults and children chosen for followup in the present project are randomized at the individual level.

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

75 schools in the PSDP (73 schools included in the follow-up sample).

Sample size: planned number of observations

7,000 children

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

For the PSDP follow-up study, 48 schools are in the treatment group, and 25 are in the control.
For the vocational training study, 1,055 individuals are in the treatment group, and 1,108 are in the control group.
For the cash grants study, 950 individuals are in the treatment group and 1,213 are in the control group.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

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