Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Given the consensus around private returns to preschool, I ask do spillover benefits exist from preschool education? I exploit district and time variation in access to a South Carolina preschool program (CDEP) that targets disadvantaged four-year-olds, those eligible for free or reduced-price lunch or Medicaid. Utilizing a difference-in-differences design, I estimate the effect on test scores of exposure to CDEP, meaning residing in a CDEP district after launch at age four. I find that CDEP not only benefits its targeted population, but also improves the scores of exposed, CDEP-ineligible students by 0.04 standard deviations, perhaps through improvements in student behavior.