The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Early Childhood Education by Television: Lessons from Sesame Street
Open accessAbstract
We investigate whether preschool-age children exposed to Sesame Street when it aired in 1969 experienced improved educational and labor market outcomes. We exploit geographic variation in broadcast reception derived from technological factors, namely UHF versus VHF transmission. This variation is then related to census data on grade-for-age status, educational attainment, and labor market outcomes. The results indicate that Sesame Street improved school performance, particularly for boys. The point estimates for long-term educational and labor market outcomes are generally imprecise. (JEL I21, I26, J13, J24, L82)
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
An analysis of effects of broadcasting in early 1970s found effects were largest for children from disadvantaged neighborhoods as well as for boys and Black children.
“An analysis of the effects of broadcasting in the early 1970s (Kearney & Levine, 2019) examined variation in access to the show to estimate the effects, which were largest for children from disadvantaged neighborhoods as well as for boys and Black children.”
From Stories in Action. (2022) · cites this paper as Kearney & Levine, 2019
The Conclusion reports particularly pronounced effects for boys, Black non-Hispanic children, and children from economically disadvantaged counties. The citing sentence changes counties to neighborhoods, a finer geographic claim the paper does not establish. The methods passages also date the show's introduction and the study's exposure comparison to 1969, rather than specifically to the early 1970s. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredEarly evidence from randomized trials revealed that Sesame Street had a significant and immediate impact on literacy and numeracy among children between 3 and 4 years old.
“Early evidence from randomized trials revealed that the show had a significant and immediate impact on literacy and numeracy among children between 3 and 4 years old.”
From Stories in Action. (2022) · cites this paper as Kearney & Levine, 2019
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 20
- 10.1111/1540-5834.00121 · DOI
- 10.3368/jhr.XLI.2.294 · DOI
- 10.1093/qje/qjr041 · DOI · Paper page
- Currie Janet, 1995, American Economic Review, 85, 341
- 10.1257/jep.22.3.71 · DOI
- 10.1111/j.1460-2466.1976.tb01394.x · DOI
- 10.1257/jep.27.2.109 · DOI
- 10.1162/qjec.2008.123.1.279 · DOI
- 10.1126/science.1128898 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1111/j.1750-8606.2008.00061.x · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1162/qjec.2009.124.3.1057 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1111/1468-0297.00098 · DOI
- 10.1162/qjec.122.1.159 · DOI
- 10.1257/app.1.4.1 · DOI
- 10.1086/506484 · DOI
- Paulson F. Leon., 1974, AV Communication Review, 22, 229, 10.1007/BF02768560 · DOI
- Rothenberger Cecilia, 2004, American University Law Review, 53, 689
- 10.3102/0162373712462453 · DOI
- Stevens Katharine B, 2015, Education in America-And How to Improve it, 66
- 10.2307/1190898 · DOI
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Walsh, J., Vaida, N., Coman, A., & Fiske, S. T. (2022) · Psychological Science in the Public Interest · doi:10.1177/15291006231161337 · Cited by 26
“The effects were comparable with those found in early Head Start evaluations (summarized by Kearney & Levine, 2019).”
BackgroundResultInfluential
Metadata
- Authors
- Kearney, M. S., & Levine, P. B.
- Affiliations
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
- Venue
- American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2019-01-01
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 318-350
- ISSN
- 1945-7782 (ISSN-L)
- 1945-7790
- OpenAlex
- W2906721660
- Cited by
- 48
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2
- FWCI
- 14.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- American Economic Journal Applied Economics (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Child Development and Digital Technology
- Social Sciences › Education › Early Childhood Education and Development
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Keywords
- Sesame Street, educational television, early childhood education, preschool children, broadcast reception, academic performance, educational attainment, labor market outcomes, gender differences
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
