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  5. Informing Mothers About the Benefits of Conversing With Infants: Experimental Evidence From Ghana

American Economic Journal:
Economic Policy

ISSN 1945-7731 (Print) | ISSN 1945-774X (Online)

Informing Mothers About the Benefits of Conversing With Infants: Experimental Evidence From Ghana

  • Pascaline Dupas
  • Camille Falezan
  • Seema Jayachandran
  • Mark Walsh
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (Forthcoming)

Abstract

We evaluate a low-cost intervention designed to boost parents’ verbal engagement with infants, which tends to be limited in developing countries. In our randomized experiment, recent or expectant mothers watched a three-minute informational video and received a themed calendar. Six months later, treated mothers reported stronger belief in the benefits of verbal engagement, more frequent parent-infant conversation, and more advanced infant language skills. Treatment effects on objective measures of parent-child conversation frequency and infant skills were positive but insignificant. We find larger immediate treatment effects on objective parent-child conversation, suggesting potentially larger long-term effects had the behavior change stuck more.

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