Gender-specific effects of early childhood intervention: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial

This paper investigates the effects of an early childhood intervention in Germany that begins prenatally and continues until the child's second birthday. The intervention consists of home visits and targets socially disadvantaged first-time mothers to improve child development. The effects on child development were assessed via developmental tests in a randomized controlled trial. Home visits significantly improved girls' cognitive development during the first 24 months after birth. In contrast, the intervention had no effect on boys. These gender-specific outcomes can be explained by greater increases in parental investment (e.g. reading to the child) for girls than for boys. Our results demonstrate that early childhood interventions have an effect on early cognitive child development, although concentrated on girls, in a country where a wide range of additional support services are available for disadvantaged mothers with young children.