Method:<p><i>The stimulation intervention included weekly home visits by trained community health workers, who encouraged and instructed mothers on how to play and interact with their children. For the nutrition intervention, health workers distributed weekly nutritional supplements to homes, as well as additional cornmeal and skimmed milk powder to discourage sharing of the supplement with other family members.</i><p>Result:<p><i>Most notably, children who received stimulation achieved 0.6 more years of schooling, or 5.6 percent more schooling, than participating children who did not receive stimulation, and were nearly three times as likely to have had some college-level education.</i>
Another Heckman study. Oh, I thought this sounded familiar: <a href="http://andrewgelman.com/2013/11/05/how-much-do-we-trust-this-claim-that-early-childhood-stimulation-raised-earnings-by-42/" rel="nofollow">http://andrewgelman.com/2013/11/05/how-much-do-we-trust-this...</a>
I'm pretty sure this study was mentioned in a recent episode of EconTalk, where the guest was talking about statistical significance, p-hacking, etc. I'm Jamaican, so I perked up when it came up.
I'm surprised that the psychosocial intervention was as effective as it was, however I expected the nutrition arm of the trial to fare better. I guess interacting with intelligent and engaging adults as a child really has long-term developmental benefits.
Education should be society's #1 priority. I find it truly baffling that we have yet to agree on this -- or, if by some reason you think we <i>have</i> agreed, that we haven't acted on it.