There is an ever-growing emphasis worldwide on increasing access to early childhood care and education
programs and generating high-quality educational experiences for children, especially those from lowincome families. Chile is not an exception in this global trend. Although Chile has significantly expanded
early education coverage for children from low-income backgrounds, there has been little research to
assess the effects these programs have had in improving academic outcomes. Responding to this need,
this study assesses the impact of Chile’s public early childhood education programs on fourth-grade
academic achievement (as measured by the country’s national Education Quality Measurement System,
SIMCE). Our results indicate that, after controlling for socio-demographic factors potentially associated
with choosing to participate in an ECCE program or not, ECCE is positively associated with academic gains
on all three SIMCE tests: mathematics, reading, and social sciences. Chilean children who participated in
public ECCE programs scored on average 0.23 Standard Deviations (SD) higher in math, 0.19 SD higher in
reading, and 0.19 SD higher in social sciences than children who did not attend an ECCE program before
entering Kindergarten. However, our findings suggest that not all children benefit equally from attending
ECCE. Results show that boys benefit academically significantly more than girls, and that the ECCE effect
on academic achievement also differs depending on the Socioeconomic Status (SES) of the families, with
children from middle-low SES groups benefiting the most.