Long-run Effects of Universal Pre-Primary Education Expansion: Evidence from Argentina

We study the long-run effects of a large public expansion of pre-primary education in Argentina. Between 1993 and 1999, the federal government financed the construction of new preschool classrooms targeted to departments with low baseline enrollment and high poverty, creating roughly 186,000 additional places. We link administrative records on classroom construction to four population censuses and estimate use a difference-in-differences approach that compares exposed and unexposed cohorts across high and low-construction departments. An additional preschool place per eligible child increases post-kindergarten schooling by about 0.5 years, raising the probability of completing secondary school by 11.9 percentage points and of attaining any post-secondary education by 7.1 percentage points. For women, access to the program also reduces fertility: an additional seat reduces cumulative births by young adulthood by 0.20. We find little impact on labor-market outcomes, consistent with beneficiaries still being in school or in the early stages of their careers. A projected benefit-cost analysis based on the estimated schooling gains, standard Mincer returns, and observed construction and operating costs yields a benefit-cost ratio of about 11 and an internal rate of return of 13%. Our findings show that universal at-scale pre-primary expansions in middle-income countries can generate sizable improvements in human capital and demographic outcomes with potentially large fiscal returns.