TY  - RPRT
        AU  - CATTAN, SaRAH
AU  - Conti, Gabriella
AU  - Farquharson, Christine
        TI  - Workforce Quality and Early Childhood Development at Scale
        PY  - 2026/Apr/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18584
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18584
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - early childhood development
KW  - home visiting
KW  - workforce quality
KW  - process quality
KW  - scaling
KW  - Family Nurse Partnership
        ER  -