How to Prioritize Early Childhood? A Note on the Recent Experience in Colombia

This paper assesses Colombia’s recent expansion in comprehensive early childhood care, underscoring the importance of strong high-level political commitment, inter-institutional coordination and stable financing. According to initial evaluations, the socioeconomic vocabulary gap has been reduced by 33 percent. To a great degree, the strategy’s success is related to Law 1607 of 2012 that earmarked part of the corporate income tax and established a floor to budgetary appropriation for this program, with a minimum growth of inflation plus two percentage points. Grassroots organizations influencing local politics, and NGOs focusing in early childhood have been also key to the strategy.