EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

How Daycare Quality Shapes Norms around Daycare Use and Parental Employment: Experimental Evidence from Germany

Marie-Fleur Philipp (marie-fleur.philipp@unituebingen.de), Silke Büchau, Pia S. Schober, Viktoria Werner and C. Katharina Spieß (c.katharina.spiess@bib.bund.de)
Additional contact information
Marie-Fleur Philipp: University of Tübingen
Silke Büchau: University of Tübingen
Pia S. Schober: University of Tübingen
Viktoria Werner: University of Tübingen
C. Katharina Spieß: Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerungsforschung (BiB)

No 16729, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Not only the quantity of formal daycare provision for young children, but also its quality has become an issue of political concern. This experimental study investigates how a hypothetical improvement in the quality of daycare facilities shapes normative judgements regarding daycare use and working hours norms for parents with young children in Germany. The analysis is framed using capability-based explanations combined with theoretical concepts of ideals of care and normative policy feedback theories. We draw on a factorial survey experiment implemented in 2019/2020 in the German Family Panel (pairfam) measuring underlying work-care norms for a couple with a 15-month-old child under different contextual conditions. Ordered logistic and linear multilevel regressions were conducted with 5,324 respondents. On average, high hypothetical daycare quality for young children leads respondents to recommend greater daycare use and longer working hours for mothers and fathers by about 1 hour per week. Respondents who hold more egalitarian gender beliefs, those with tertiary education, native Germans and parents tend to respond more strongly to higher daycare quality by increasing their support for full-daycare use. The results consistently point to the relevance of high quality for increasing the acceptance and subsequently take-up of formal daycare.

Keywords: work-care norms; gender beliefs; care ideals; early childhood education and care; daycare; childcare; factorial survey; pairfam; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J13 J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2024-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-exp and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16729.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16729

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
library@iza.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte (hinte@iza.org).

 
Page updated 2025-03-30
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16729