Child Care and Early Education Research Connections

Skip to main content

Head Start and parental mental health: Differentiated impacts of Head Start by cohort and comparison group

Description:
The burden of childcare can affect parental mental health, an important determinant of early childhood environmental quality. This is especially true for low-income households. Head Start provides free and public childcare for low-income families that can potentially ameliorate the burdens of childcare by improving parental health. This paper uses random assignment under the Head Start Impact Study to test for Head Start's causal impact on parental mental health. Head Start's impact is found to differ across cohorts, with positive results found only for the three-year-old cohort in 2003, the first year of the study and this cohort's only year in the program. Further, this paper examines differences in childcare-seeking behavior to identify changes between cohorts and across time, and identifies contamination of the control group as a possible explanation for these mixed results. (author abstract)
Resource Type:
Reports & Papers
Author(s):
Country:
United States

- You May Also Like

These resources share similarities with the current selection.

South Dakota Head Start & Early Head Start: Nutrition & mental health

Fact Sheets & Briefs

Head Start focus group report 2010-2011

Reports & Papers

South Dakota Head Start & Early Head Start: Health

Fact Sheets & Briefs
Release: 'v1.57.0' | Built: 2024-03-14 09:29:08 EDT