Universal childcare and long-term effects on child well-being: Evidence from Canada

Laetitia Lebihan, Catherine Haeck and Philip Merrigan

No 15-02, Working Papers from Research Group on Human Capital, University of Quebec in Montreal's School of Management

Abstract: Starting in 1997, the Canadian province of Quebec implemented a $5 per day universal childcare policy for children aged less than 5 years old. This reform significantly increased mothers' participation in the labor market as well as the proportion of children attending subsidized childcare. In this paper, we evaluate the long-term effects of the policy on child well-being (health, behavior, motor and social development) using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. We follow treated children for more than 9 years and investigate the impact well beyond the first few years of the policy. A nonexperimental evaluation framework based on multiple pre- and posttreatment periods is used to estimate the policy effects. We show that the reform had negative effects on preschool children's well-being, but these effects tend to disappear as the child gets older. We find that this pattern persist even ten years after the implementation of the reform.

Keywords: universal childcare; child well-being; childcare policy; natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I31 J13 J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2015-07, Revised 2017-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Forthcoming Journal of Human Capital

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https://grch.esg.uqam.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/ ... gan_GRCH_WP15-02.pdf Revised version, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Universal Child Care and Long-Term Effects on Child Well-Being: Evidence from Canada (2018)
Working Paper: Universal Child Care and Long-Term Effects on Child Well-Being: Evidence from Canada (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:grc:wpaper:15-02

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