Three-Year Outcomes for Low-Income Parents of Young Children in a Two-Generation Education Program

AbstractIncreasingly, parents of young children need postsecondary credentials to compete in the labor market and meet basic family needs. This study uses a quasi-experimental design to examine the effects of CareerAdvance, a two-generation education intervention that offers postsecondary career training in healthcare for parents paired with Head Start for children. Overall, we find that CareerAdvance promotes low-income parents’ educational advancement during the first three years after program entry, with weaker evidence of benefits to career progress and psychological wellbeing, and no evidence of economic gains. The two-generation program promotes greater educational and career advancement among parents without postsecondary credentials at baseline, than for parents who began the program with postsecondary credentials. In contrast, exploratory analyses suggest that parents entering the program with postsecondary credentials experienced benefits to some individual markers of economic and psychological wellbeing within three years.Keywords: ParentsHead Starteducationpolicypropensity score Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Open ScholarshipThis article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Materials. The materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/5NVM3.Additional informationFundingHealth Profession Opportunity Grant 90FX00100, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Health Profession Opportunity Grant-University Partnership 90PH0020, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. W.K. Kellogg Foundation Grant P3020014. Foundation for Child Development Grant Northwestern 06-2014.