How investments in childcare quality affect centre survival: evidence from Bolivia

This study evaluates a programme that improved caregiver training and infrastructure at locally managed childcare centres in high-poverty areas of Bolivia. In 2012, 170 centres were randomly assigned to treatment or control groups. The programme increased centre survival by 46 percentage points in 2018 and 23 percentage points in 2023, with larger effects among the most vulnerable centres and municipalities. It also substantially improved service quality, with surviving treatment centres scoring 1.23 standard deviations higher than controls. Mediation analysis suggests that human-capital investments, rather than infrastructure, drove these effects. The estimated benefit–cost ratio is 2.6, largely due to prevented closures.