Early Childhood Education and Children Development : Evidence from Ghana

While early childhood education (ECE) has received rising interest from researchers in recent years, its effect on child development is still unclear in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper investigates the effectiveness of ECE on 3-4 years old children development outcomes in Ghana. We exploit data from the 2011 round of the Ghana Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), to build a multidimensional early child development index that accounts for children’s ability to read, count, recognize number, interact with peers and other people, follow rules and be independent as well as their health outcomes and physical skills. Then, we estimate the effect of ECE on child development using an endogenous treatment effect model to account for children unequal access to ECE. Results indicate that attending to ECE program increases children early development indicator. This finding is robust to several changes in the specifications