In addition to the parallel sessions, we will host three invited sessions around the theme "Advanced research methods and analyses using register data" on Thursday morning between 10:30 and 12:00.
School-Based Interventions for Inclusion
Room: V001 (BIZ)
Ellen Sahlström (Aalto University): Preventing the social exclusion of immigrants
We conduct a randomized field experiment evaluating a classroom-based intervention aimed at reducing discrimination and bullying among fifth grade students. We collect large-scale survey data (N=17,022) on social networks and bullying before and after the treatment, and combine this with data from administrative registers. At baseline, children of immigrants have worse academic grades, and are more likely to experience social isolation and to report bullying than their non-immigrant peers. Our preliminary results show increases in academic performance and decreases in social isolation, with similar effects regardless of student backgrounds. The immigrant-native gap in reported bullying decreases, driven by increased reporting among natives. Our study provides evidence on the effects of a low-cost intervention implemented at scale.
Christina Salmivalli (University of Turku): From playground to paycheck: Long-Term Effects of the KiVa anti-bullying program
KiVa anti-bullying program was developed at the University of Turku and evaluated in a large randomized controlled trial in two phases, in 2007-08 and 2008-09. As nearly all control schools adopted the program right after the RCT, the distinction between intervention and control schools was lost. However, to investigate the long-term effects of the program we could follow students in the oldest cohorts, who left the basic education after the trial – the control school students in these cohorts were never exposed to the program, or were only minimally exposed to it.
The RCT questionnaire data (collected when participants were in Grades 8 and 9) from 15 000 individuals was linked to register data on education, employment, earnings, and crime in young adulthood. The findings showed that young adults who had been in a school implementing KiVa were more likely to pursue the academic track in upper secondary education, more likely to obtain a university degree, and had higher earnings by their late twenties. Potential mechanisms of these effects were analyzed using RCT questionnaire data. Decreases in bullying were mainly concentrated among boys, but these effects translated into a better learning environment, greater academic motivation, and socio-emotional gains for all groups of students, irrespective of their gender or social role at baseline. Finally, the reduction in harmful behavior persisted into adulthood: treated boys were significantly less likely to engage in criminal activity than those who had been in control schools.
Room: V002 (BIZ)
Jessica Nisén (University of Turku): Could an increase in educational attainment impact fertility in Finland?
This study examines whether fewer women and men born in the 1980s would have remained childless or had fewer children overall had they been more highly educated. The study was conducted using Finnish registry data and a simulation-based method.
Hanna Virtanen (ETLA Economic Research): Education, gender and family formation
We provide the first causal evidence on the effects of higher education on family formation for both men and women, exploiting a regression discontinuity design generated by centralized admissions to tertiary education in Finland. Admission to education increases the likelihood that women have children, but has no effect for men. These results challenge common theories based on household specialization which predict a gender asymmetry in the effects going in the opposite direction, but are more in line with more recent theories highlighting the role of progressive gender norms and family policy in mitigating the career costs of family formation for women.
Supporting Early Childhood Development
Room: U006 (BIZ)
Mikko Silliman (Aalto University): Life-cycle effects of public childcare: Evidence on children and their parents
This paper provides large-scale evidence linking the economic effects of childcare programs to social skills measured in adulthood. We examine Finland's first national public childcare program, and document that it increased parental labor supply - through retirement - while reducing the intergenerational persistence of income. Critically, we leverage Finnish Defence Forces data on the near population of males to show that effects on children's adult income are underlied by lasting effects on social skills. Further, we show that life-cycle cost-effectiveness estimates based on the assumption of constant effects after typical observation windows can considerably overestimate the net costs of public childcare.
Maria Sauval (Aalto University): The effects of cash transfers through the COVID-19 pandemic
The Baby’s First Years (BFY) study is an ongoing randomized control trial that provided unconditional monthly cash transfers to low-income mothers with young children to assess the effects of income support on child developmental outcomes. The study found null effects on all pre-registered child developmental assessments taken when study children were four years old. This presentation will provide an overview of the BFY study and present a follow-up analysis in which we ask whether the COVID-19 pandemic might have been responsible for the absence of BFY effects. Our results suggest that the pandemic’s disruptions generated few and mostly short-lived detrimental impacts on most aspects of family functioning. Pandemic financial supports appeared to produce more persistent decreases in material hardship. Taken together, the collection of family process measures did not appear to have played an important role in the absence of treatment group differences in children’s age-4 developmental outcomes.
