Nudging Parents and Teachers to Improve Learning and Reduce Child Labor in Cote d’Ivoire

There is a growing literature on the potential of text-message-based nudge interventions to increase parent engagement and improve child learning outcomes. It is unknown whether these interventions can be effective across diverse contexts such as rural West Africa, where child labor is common and learning outcomes are very low. We use a school-randomized trial to test the impacts of a text-message intervention (two messages per week for the duration of one school year) to parents and teachers of second and fourth grade students (N = 198 classrooms, 2,243 students) in rural Cote d’Ivoire. Schools (N = 100) were randomly assigned to have messages sent to (i) parents alone, (ii) teachers alone, (iii) parents and teachers together, and (iv) control. Impacts are found only for the intervention arm targeting parents alone. Specifically, we find positive marginally statistically significant impacts on child numeracy (d = 0.07, p < .09) and increases in child labor based on child-reports (d = 0.11, p < .05). Implications are discussed for nudge-based interventions, international education, child labor, and parent engagement.