Enrolling in publicly funded early childhood programs in the U.S. often requires families to navigate a complex, multistep process. Families must pick a program, apply, verify their eligibility, and enroll. Prior research shows that families that complete this process tend to be advantaged relative to eligible non-applicants. In this study, we illuminate the enrollment pathway in New Orleans, showing that many would-be enrollees are lost at each step along the way. Next, we examine the effects of an information intervention that aimed to help families with the “apply” step. We find that a simple text-message intervention increased application rates by 33 %. However, due to leaks at subsequent steps, the intervention had no effect on enrollment rates. We discuss the implications for understanding and improving the enrollment process for publicly funded early childhood programs.

中文翻译：

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增加儿童早教注册流程的机会：来自新奥尔良信息干预的证据


在美国，参加公共资助的幼儿项目通常需要家庭经历一个复杂的、多步骤的过程。家庭必须选择一个项目、申请、验证其资格并注册。先前的研究表明，完成此过程的家庭相对于符合条件的非申请人往往更具优势。在这项研究中，我们阐明了新奥尔良的入学途径，表明许多潜在的入学者在沿途的每一步中都迷失了方向。接下来，我们研究旨在帮助家庭完成“申请”步骤的信息干预措施的效果。我们发现，简单的短信干预使申请率提高了 33%。然而，由于后续步骤的泄漏，干预措施对入学率没有影响。我们讨论了对理解和改进公共资助的幼儿计划的注册流程的影响。