We study the impact of a preschool construction program and of two demand-side interventions in Cambodia. Within this context where other preschools are available, impacts are likely to differ between children who would have been enrolled in a preexisting preschool and those who would have stayed at home, with larger expected gains for the latter. After one year, we measure positive intent-to-treat impacts on an aggregate measure of development and show that the effect on children who would have stayed at home can be bounded (0.14-0.49 SD). Under heavier assumptions, we pinpoint this effect at 0.21 SD, while the effect on children who would have enrolled in another preschool is close to zero. These results are consistent with measures of preschool quality which imply that the newly constructed schools only significantly improved infrastructure, but did not improve the quality of educational processes. After two years, most impacts become insignificant suggesting that the advantage provided by preschool quickly vanished, specifically once children enrolled in primary school.

我们研究了柬埔寨的学前建设计划和两项需求方干预措施的影响。在存在其他幼儿园的情况下，就读于现有幼儿园的儿童和留在家里的儿童之间的影响可能会有所不同，后者的预期收益更大。一年后，我们测量了意向治疗对总体发展指标的积极影响，结果表明，对留在家里的儿童的影响是有限的（0.14-0.49 SD）。在更严格的假设下，我们将这种影响确定为 0.21 SD，而对本来要入读另一所幼儿园的儿童的影响接近于零。这些结果与学前教育质量的衡量标准一致，这意味着新建学校仅显着改善了基础设施，但并未提高教育过程的质量。两年后，大多数影响变得微不足道，这表明学前班提供的优势很快消失了，特别是在儿童入学小学后。