- Argentina’s 1993–1999 preschool expansion added thousands of classrooms in disadvantaged areas, enabling long-term evaluation of participating children’s outcomes.
- Access to preschool increased schooling by about half a year, raised secondary completion and post-secondary enrollment, and reduced women’s lifetime fertility.
- The program proved highly cost-effective, delivering large social returns through higher lifetime earnings and demonstrating universal preschool’s long-term development impact.
Between 1993 and 1999, Argentina's federal government embarked on an ambitious mission: building 3,724 new preschool classrooms across the country while creating roughly 186,000 new places for young children in a full-scale expansion targeting the country's most disadvantaged areas.
Now, more than two decades later, we have documented what happened to the children who benefited from this effort. Our IDB study reveals substantial long-term gains that encompass not only greater educational enrollment and completion but also progress in family planning, with a reduction in live births per woman.
These achievements, at a relatively low cost, have important implications for long-term growth and social development, especially for developing and middle-income countries, such as Argentina, where educational attainment has historically been linked to economic mobility.
Preschool Leads to Greater Enrollment and Completion Rates
Beginning in the early 1990s, Argentina’s government strategically targeted preschool construction in economically disadvantaged departments with low baseline preschool enrollment, making the program both equitable and effective. Our study compared regions that received many new classrooms with those that received few while accounting for pre-existing differences between areas.
We found that for each additional preschool seat, students gained about half a year of additional education after kindergarten. This translated into an 11.9 percentage point increase in the probability of completing secondary school and a 7.1 percentage point boost in post-secondary enrollment.
Lower Fertility Rates
Perhaps even more surprising than the educational gains were the effects on women's fertility decisions. Access to preschool reduced the number of children women had by 0.18—a 15% decrease. While the program didn't significantly affect women’s decisions to become mothers during their teenage years, it appears to have contributed to smaller family sizes overall.
This finding aligns with a well-established pattern: more education typically leads to reduced childbearing. By keeping young women in school longer and opening doors to post-secondary education, the preschool expansion appears to have influenced their family planning decisions years down the road.
From a purely fiscal perspective, the program was also cost-effective. We calculated that for every dollar spent on building and operating preschool classrooms, society reaped about $11 in benefits, primarily through the increased lifetime earnings that result from higher educational attainment. The internal rate of return came to 13.44%, making this a highly attractive public investment.
These returns stem from three key factors: relatively modest construction and operating costs (about $213 per seat-year), meaningful improvements in completed schooling, and the persistent wage premium that education commands in the labor market. Although we didn't find significant employment effects at the time of measurement, this makes sense: many beneficiaries were still in school or just entering the workforce. The real economic gains will likely materialize as they progress through their careers with enhanced credentials.
Implications for Policy
The success of Argentina's program depended on thoughtful implementation: targeting underserved areas, maintaining reasonable quality standards, and ensuring that new facilities were actually filled with students. Rather than creating something entirely new, the program also built on the country’s existing educational infrastructure.
Our study has important lessons for policymakers worldwide, particularly in developing and middle-income countries weighing investments in early childhood education. It demonstrates that universal preschool programs can generate substantial long-term benefits without requiring the expensive targeted interventions sometimes seen in smaller pilot programs.
Similar expansions in other countries, of course, might yield different results depending on program quality, the baseline educational environment, and complementary policies. But Argentina's experience provides compelling evidence that investing in universal preschool can pay dividends for decades. Indeed, the children who entered those new classrooms in the 1990s are now adults in their twenties and thirties, with more education, different family structures, and brighter economic prospects than they might otherwise have had.
As countries worldwide grapple with questions about how best to invest in their youngest citizens, this experience offers an encouraging roadmap. A well-designed preschool expansion can simultaneously advance educational equity, boost human capital, and positively influence demographic trends.
Keywords:
Research and Development