Starting Early: Returns on Kindergarten Attendance in Indonesia
This project is my Honors Thesis in Economics that I am completing with my advisor Ranjan Shrestha at William & Mary. I examine the effects of kindergarten on short-, medium-, and long-term effects. I employ three empirical strategies: OLS estimation, mother fixed-effects, and instrumental variable (IV) estimation. I find kindergarten has mixed effects; for OLS and IV estimation, kindergarten has strong positive effects on years of education completed, school completion, and cognitive test scores. However, using mother fixed-effects, there’s no statistically significant evidence of kindergarten’s effects. I also find mixed results regarding fadeout. I am interested in extending this project after graduation to examine heterogenous effects using Bayesian methods, kindergarten’s effects on labor market outcomes, and other health, social, and economic outcomes.