Early Childhood Care and Cognitive Development

Juan Chaparro, Aaron Sojourner and Matthew Wiswall ()

No 2020-012, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: This paper combines multiple sources of information on early childhood development in a unified model for analysis of a wide range of early childhood policy interventions. We develop a model of child care in which households decide both the quantities and qualities of maternal and non-maternal care along with maternal labor supply. The model introduces a novel parenting-effort channel, whereby child care subsidies that permit less parenting may enable better parenting. To estimate the model, we combine observational data with experimental data from the Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) which randomly assigned free child care when the child was 1 and 2 years old. We estimate a cognitive skill production function and household preferences, giving insight into mechanisms driving the ex post heterogeneous effects of the IHDP intervention, accounting for alternative care substitutes available to the control group and spillovers of the child care offer across the household's decisions. We also estimate ex ante effects of counterfactual policies such as an offer of lower-quality care, requiring a co-pay for subsidized care, raising the maternal wage offer, or a cash transfer. Finally, we use the model to rationalize existing evidence from outside the US on the effects of universal child care programs.

Keywords: human capital; skill formation; child care; maternal labor supply (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lab
Note: FI, M, MIP
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Chapar ... ood-care-cog-dev.pdf First version, February 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Early Childhood Care and Cognitive Development (2020)
Working Paper: Early Childhood Care and Cognitive Development (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hka:wpaper:2020-012

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