On the importance of families and public policies for child development outcomes

This thesis investigates how public interventions in developing countries can promote human capital accumulation of children at different stages of life (pre-school, compulsory and post-compulsory school) and how a specific characteristic of a child, the order of birth, might affect the intrahousehold allocation of resources and produce outcome differences across siblings. All the chapters use data from Ecuador, a lower middle income country. Throughout the chapters, several empirical techniques are employed to give a causal interpretation to the different effects that are estimated.
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 evaluate the impact on poor children of two of the largest providers of early childhood development interventions in Ecuador. Chapter 4 examines the impact of a housing assistance program on school enrollment, child labor and poverty reduction in Ecuador. Finally, chapter 5 analyzes the role that birth order has on parents’ decisions to invest in their children’s education and on the decision to send them to the labor market.