|
Field
Abstract
|
Before
Disadvantaged children arrive at kindergarten less ready for school than their more advantaged counterparts. Prior research shows that family engagement is a key element of improving child skills. As such, Head Start and other publicly supported preschools are required to spend substantial funds promoting family engagement. To increase parental attendance at school-sponsored family-engagement events, we designed an intervention using a combination of financial incentives and behavioral tools. We conducted our 17-week experimental intervention with 319 parents across six preschools in Chicago during the 2018-19 school year. We offered treatment parents \$25 per event to attend eight events sponsored by their preschool, along with weekly text message reminders of the events. The financial incentive was designed as a ``clawback'' incentive, i.e. framed using loss aversion. Results show that the likelihood of attending an event was 16.5\% in the treatment group versus 12.9\% in the control group, a difference that was statistically significant. There was no significant heterogeneity by event time and length. We also found a significant positive spillover, where treatment parents were more likely to attend events beyond the ones we incentivized.
|
After
Disadvantaged children arrive at kindergarten less ready for school than their more advantaged counterparts. Prior research shows that family engagement is a key element of improving child skills. As such, Head Start and other publicly supported preschools are required to spend substantial funds promoting family engagement. To increase parental attendance at school-sponsored family-engagement events, we designed an intervention using a combination of financial incentives and behavioral tools. We conducted our 17-week experimental intervention with 319 parents across six preschools in Chicago during the 2018-19 school year. We offered treatment parents $25 per event to attend eight events sponsored by their preschool, along with weekly text message reminders of the events. The financial incentive was designed as a "clawback" incentive, i.e. framed using loss aversion. Results show that the likelihood of attending an event was 16.5% in the treatment group versus 12.9% in the control group, representing a 28% difference that was statistically significant. There was no significant heterogeneity by event time and length. We also found a significant positive spillover, where treatment parents were more likely to attend events beyond the ones we incentivized.
|