Nudging parents and teachers to improve learning and reduce child labor in Cote d’Ivoire

Abstract

Whether SMS-based nudge interventions can increase parent engagement and improve child learning outcomes across diverse contexts such as rural West Africa is unknown. We conducted a school-randomized trial to test the impacts of an audio or text-message intervention (two messages per week for one school year) to parents and teachers of second and fourth grade students ( N = 100 schools, 2246 students) in Cote d’Ivoire. Schools were randomly assigned to have messages sent to (i) parents only, (ii) teachers only, (iii) parents and teachers together, or (iv) control. There were statistically non-significant impacts of the parents-only treatment on learning, although with typical effect sizes ( d = 0.08, p = 0.158), and marginally statistically significant increases in child labor ( d = 0.11, p < 0.10). We find no impacts of the other treatment conditions. Subgroup analyses based on pre-registered subgroups show significantly larger improvements in learning for children with below-median baseline learning levels for the parents-only arm and negative impacts on learning for girls for the teachers-only arm, suggesting different conclusions regarding impacts on equity for vulnerable children.