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Cited by 367

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 17 of the 17 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Evaluating Public Programs with Close Substitutes: The Case of Head Start*

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Kline, Patrick, Walters, Christopher R.·2016·The Quarterly Journal of Economics

Abstract

We use data from the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of Head Start, the largest early childhood education program in the United States. Head Start draws roughly a third of its participants from competing preschool programs, many of which receive public funds. We show that accounting for the fiscal impacts of such program substitution pushes estimates of Head Start’s benefit-cost ratio well above one under a wide range of assumptions on the structure of the market for preschool services and the dollar value of test score gains. To parse the program’s test score impacts relative to home care and competing preschools, we selection-correct test scores in each care environment using excluded interactions between experimental assignments and household characteristics. We find that Head Start generates larger test score gains for children who would not otherwise attend preschool and for children who are less likely to participate in the program.

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Metadata

Authors
Kline, P., & Walters, C. R.
Venue
The Quarterly Journal of Economics
Published
2016-07-11
Volume
131
Issue
4
Pages
1795-1848
ISSN
  • 0033-5533 (ISSN-L)
  • 1531-4650
OpenAlex
W1831990249
Cited by
367
References
17
FWCI
135.66
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Evaluating Public Programs with Close Substitutes: The Case of Head Start*. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/qje/qjw027
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Kline, P., & Walters, C. R. (2016). Evaluating Public Programs with Close Substitutes: The Case of Head Start*. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjw027

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.