Abstract
Background: Older children in developing countries are often charged with extensive caregiving and domestic responsibilities, which may impact the amount of time they participate in school. Provision of affordable, high-quality daycare may eliminate some of the burden placed on older siblings, but most research to-date focuses on outcomes among the children actually enrolled in care. Our goal was to estimate the effect of formal childcare provision on older siblings’ school participation in India’s largest state.
Methods: Data were drawn from a cluster-randomized trial conducted in rural Rajasthan, India. We used an intention-to-treat approach to assess the impact of treatment assignment on several indicators of school enrollment and reasons for non-enrollment. We also stratified all models by sex to explore potential effect heterogeneity.
Results: We found a weak relationship between treatment assignment and children’s school participation (measured in days per week): (0.09, 95% CI: 0.04, 0.14). Other estimates were largely null, likely due to the relatively short follow-up period at the time of analysis.
Conclusion: Our preliminary findings suggest that provision of formal, affordable childcare may be associated with changes in educational outcomes in older siblings. Future work will use the full range of data to assess long-term effects of this intervention.