Who Benefits from Universal Child Care? Estimating Marginal Returns to Early Child Care Attendance

Thomas Cornelissen (), Christian Dustmann, Anna Raute () and Uta Schönberg ()
Additional contact information
Anna Raute: Queen Mary, University of London
Uta Schönberg: University College London

No 11688, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the heterogeneous treatment effects of a universal child care (preschool) program in Germany by exploiting the exogenous variation in attendance caused by a reform that led to a large staggered expansion across municipalities. Drawing on novel administrative data from the full population of compulsory school entry examinations, we find that children with lower (observed and unobserved) gains are more likely to select into child care than children with higher gains. This pattern of reverse selection on gains is driven by unobserved family background characteristics: children from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to attend child care than children from advantaged backgrounds but have larger treatment effects because of their worse outcome when not enrolled in child care.

Keywords: marginal treatment effects; child development; universal child care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I28 J13 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (204)

Published - published in: Journal of Political Economy, 2018, 126 (6), 2356–2409

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https://docs.iza.org/dp11688.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Who Benefits from Universal Child Care? Estimating Marginal Returns to Early Child Care Attendance (2018)
Working Paper: Who Benefits from Universal Child Care? Estimating Marginal Returns to Early Child Care Attendanc (2018)
Working Paper: Who benefits from universal child care? Estimating marginal returns to early child care attendance (2018)
Working Paper: Who benefits from universal child care? Estimating marginal returns to early child care attendance (2018)
Working Paper: Who benefits from universal child care? Estimating marginal returns to early child care attendance (2018)
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