Agostinelli, Francesco, Avitabile, Ciro and Bobba, Matteo (2024) Enhancing Human Capital in Children: A Case Study on Scaling. European Journal of Political Economy. (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper provides novel insights into the science of scaling by examining an educa-tional mentoring program in Mexico. The empirical analysis encompasses two independent field experiments, and seizes a unique opportunity to learn from the government’s implementation of the same intervention. While the program originally implemented at scale demonstrates limited effectiveness, the introduction of a new modality with enhanced mentor training significantly improves children’s outcomes. Mentor-parent interactions are found to stimulate parental engagement at the community-school level. Our findings support the hypothesis that parents can play an important role in facili-tating the scalability of educational programs.