Reducing Inequality through Dynamic Complementarity: Evidence from Head Start and Public School Spending

By Rucker C. Johnson, C. Jackson. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2019

200 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We compare the adult outcomes of cohorts who were differentially exposed to policy-induced changes in Head Start and K–12 spending, depending on place and year of birth. IV and sibling-difference estimates indicate that, for poor children, these policies both increased educational attainment and earnings, and reduced poverty and incarceration. The benefits of Head Start were larger when followed by access to better-funded schools, and increases in K–12 spending were more efficacious when preceded by Head Start exposure. The findings suggest dynamic complementarities, implying that early educational investments that are sustained may break the cycle of poverty. (JEL H52, H75, I21, I26, I28, I32, I38)

Subfields: Education, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/989f3da6de36078b69d4beb724f132cfa99cc310

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In Education

1. K. Rosinger
2. J. Ahn
3. M. Gopalan
4. Santosh Mahapatra

In Safety Research

1. K. Rosinger
2. J. Ahn
3. M. Gopalan

In Sociology and Political Science

1. K. Rosinger
2. J. Ahn
3. M. Gopalan

Citations in the corpus

• The Long-Term Effects of Universal Preschool in Boston (2021, unknown): “…designs (Garces, Thomas, and Currie 2002; Gormley et al. 2005; Ludwig and Miller 2007; Fitzpatrick 2008; Wong et al. 2008; Deming 2009; Carneiro and Ginja 2014; Thompson 2018; Johnson and Jackson 2019; De Haan and Leuven 2020; Pages et al. 2020; Bailey, Timpe, and Sun 2021; Cascio forth-coming).”
• Use of Quasi-Experimental Research Designs in Education Research: Growth, Promise, and Challenges (2020, background): “Analyses that treat policies as a homogeneous group when in fact substantial differences exist in implementation may fail to offer helpful guidance for policymakers (see Kelchen et al., 2019, for a more detailed discussion of these issues). Relatedly, another criticism often raised against an overre”
• Selection into Identification in Fixed Effects Models, with Application to Head Start (2019, unknown): “…effects of Head Start using quasi-experimental methods (Ludwig and Miller 2007; Carneiro and Ginja 2014; Thompson 2018; Bauer and Schanzenbach 2016; Johnson and Jackson 2019; Bailey, Sun, and Timpe 2021; Pages et al. 2020; Barr and Gibbs 2022; De Haan and Leuven 2020). in addition to the FFE…”
• Does school spending matter? The new literature on an old question. (2018, unknown): “However, recent evidence suggests that school spending is more effective in areas with well-established Head Start programs (Johnson and Jackson, 2017).”
• Do School Spending Cuts Matter? Evidence from the Great Recession (2018, unknown): “…spending due to the passage of school finance reforms improved student longer run outcomes such as adult wages (Jackson et al., 2016) and crime (Johnson and Jackson, 2017), medium-run outcomes such as high school completion (Candelaria and Shores, 2017), and short run outcomes such as SAT…”