Disruptions to early childhood preschool services during a pandemic: Evidence from India

• Published in: Journal of population economics Vol. 37; no. 2; p. 48
• Main Authors: Ravindran, Saravana, Shah, Manisha
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.06.2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Child development; Childhood; Children; COVID-19; Demography; Early childhood education; Economics; Economics and Finance; Health services; Immunization; Labor Economics; Labor supply; Locus of control; Motivation; Original Paper; Pandemics; Population Economics; School closures; Social Policy; Spatial variations; Workers; India; COVID-19; J18; Locus of control; Public service motivation; Early childhood development; I15; I25; J13; Lockdowns; India
• ISSN: 0933-1433; 1432-1475
• DOI: 10.1007/s00148-024-01026-7

Much less is known about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of early childhood preschool services relative to research on school closures. We conducted surveys of more than 5000 early childhood service providers and leverage temporal and spatial variation in India’s intensity of lockdowns to quantify disruptions to preschool services under the world’s largest early childhood development program between areas with different strictness of lockdown measures. We document a 23 percentage point reduction in the provision of preschool services in red zone lockdown areas (strictest measures) relative to green zone lockdown areas (least strict measures). We find that pre-COVID measures of high worker locus of control and public service motivation offset the reduction in differential preschool service provision by 27–37%.