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Early Education, Preferences, and Decision-Making Abilities

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2022-09
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2022-09-20
Author(s)
Cardim, Joana
Carneiro, Pedro
Carvalho, Leandro S.
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Abstract
One way to advance understanding of individual differences in decision making is to study the development of children’s decision making. This paper studies the causal effects of daycare attendance on children’s economic preferences and decision-making abilities, exploiting a lottery system that randomized admissions into oversubscribed daycare centers in Rio de Janeiro. Overall, daycare attendance had no effect on economic preferences or decision-making abilities. However, it did increase aversion to disadvantageous inequality (having less than one’s peer). This increase is driven mostly by girls, a result that reproduces in a different study that randomized admissions into preschool education.
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Cardim, Joana; Carneiro, Pedro; Carvalho, Leandro S.; de Walque, Damien. 2022. Early Education, Preferences, and Decision-Making Abilities. Policy Research Working Papers;10187. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/38041 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
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