@TechReport{iza:izadps:dp18584,
            	author={CATTAN, SaRAH and Conti, Gabriella and Farquharson, Christine},
            	title={Workforce Quality and Early Childhood Development at Scale},
            	year={2026},
	month={Apr},
            	institution={Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)},
            	address={Bonn},
            	type={IZA Discussion Paper},
            	number={18584},
            	url={https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18584},
	abstract={Early childhood programmes frequently lose effectiveness at scale, yet the role of the workforce remains poorly understood. We document substantial heterogeneity in workforce effectiveness in England's national home-visiting programme for first-time teenage mothers, despite a highly-structured curriculum and well-qualified staff. Exploiting quasi-random assignment of mothers to family nurses, we estimate that a one standard deviation increase in workforce effectiveness raises children's cognitive and socio-emotional development by 0.20-0.23 SD. Structural quality - observable worker characteristics - does not predict effectiveness, but process quality - how visits are delivered - does. Greater effectiveness is linked with improvements in maternal mental health and risk behaviours.},
	keywords={early childhood development;home visiting;workforce quality;process quality;scaling;Family Nurse Partnership},
            }