Parental Practices and Child Outcomes: Theory and Evidence from Delhi

Can access to educational material on parenting practice improve child outcomes?

Project Introduction

Parental practices play a critical role in shaping children’s long-term economic outcomes by influencing early skill formation, yet an important and understudied question is how parents learn parenting itself. While good parenting practices should function as a public good, access to them is unequal: in more materially advantaged contexts, learning occurs through books, online resources, and peer networks, while in low-income settings, limited education and restricted access to information and networks constrain this process. This study develops and tests a model predicting that interventions lowering barriers to accessing and adopting effective parenting practices will lead to higher adoption, especially among disadvantaged families.

Partners

Researchers

(1) more researchers

Project Methodology

The field experiment was conducted in New Delhi with permission from the Directorate of Education, with all fieldwork facilitated by DIA — including school and parent engagement, training of peer counsellors (‘Mitras’), logistics coordination, and data quality assurance. From a sample of hundreds of secondary schools in districts experiencing multidimensional poverty, several hundred parents were recruited and consented to participate. Schools were randomly assigned to a control group or one of two treatment groups: in the first, parents received a digital and hard-copy handbook of effective parenting practices; in the second, parents received the same handbook plus two 30-minute personal visits from a trained Mitra to foster learning through personal connection. Parenting practices and child outcomes were measured before and one year after the intervention, with treatment effects estimated using ANCOVA.

Impact

As analysis is ongoing, results have not yet been published, but the study expects to generate important learnings on how intentional interventions can help parents from materially disadvantaged backgrounds access and adopt effective parenting practices. The research also aims to shed light on whether such interventions can help narrow the divide in educational outcomes between children from materially disadvantaged families and their more advantaged peers.

Documentation

This project is currently in progress, and will be updated with findings as results arise.

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