We show that children who are born at the weekend or just before are less likely to be breastfed, owing to poorer breastfeeding support services at weekends. We use this variation to estimate the effect of breastfeeding on children's development for a sample of uncomplicated births from low...

This paper uses data from a rich UK birth cohort to estimate the differences in cognitive and non-cognitive skills between children born at the start and end of the academic year. It builds on the previous literature on this topic in England by using a more robust regression discontinuity design...

We study the socio-economic gradient of child development on a representative sample of low- and middle-income children aged 6-42 months in Bogota, using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, a high quality test based on direct observation of the child's abilities. We find a statistically...

We exploit the change to the minimum school-leaving age in the United Kingdom from 14 to 15 using a regression discontinuity design to evaluate the causal effect of one more year of education on cognitive abilities at older ages. We find a large and significant effect of this reform on males'...

This paper shows that there are large differences in cognitive and socio-emotional development between children from rich and poor backgrounds at the age of 3, and that this gap widens by the age of 5. Children from poor backgrounds also face much less advantageous "early childhood caring...

We study the relationship between child work and cognitive development in four Low and Middle Income Countries. We address a key weakness in the literature by including children’s full time-use vector in the analysis, which leads to different findings from previous studies which do not...

Global access to preschool has increased dramatically yet preschool quality is often poor. We use a randomized controlled trial to evaluate two approaches to improving the quality of Colombian preschools. We find that the first, which was rolled out nationwide and provides additional resources...

This paper tests whether family size has a causal effect on girls' education in Mexico. It exploits son preference as the main source of random variation in the propensity to have more children, and estimates causal effects using instrumental variables. Overall, it finds no evidence of family...

This paper investigates how the permanent departure of the father from the household affects children's school enrolment and work participation in rural Colombia. Our results show that departure of the father decreases children's school enrolment by around 4 percentage points, and increases...

The large sibling correlations in risky behaviour between siblings raise the possibility that adolescents may directly influence the actions of their brothers or sisters. We assess the extent to which correlations in substance use and selling drugs are causal. Our identification strategy relies...