Froebel’s Gifts: How the Kindergarten Movement Changed the American Family

Philipp Ager and Francesco Cinnirella

CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany

Abstract: Nineteenth-century social reformers promoted the establishment of kindergartens as a remedy for the problems associated with industrialization and immigration. Using newly collected data on historical kindergarten statistics, we evaluate the impact that the roll-out of the first kindergartens in American cities had on poor families. We find that immigrant women exposed to kindergartens significantly reduced fertility. Their offspring were more likely to attend school, they worked less at age 10-15, and they had fewer children as adults. Kindergarten exposure also helped children and mothers of non-English-speaking households to acquire English proficiency thereby illustrating the importance of kindergartens in the social integration of immigrant families.

Keywords: Kindergarten Education; Immigration; Fertility Transition; Child labor; School Attendance; Social Integration. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 J13 N31 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60
Date: 2024-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp604 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Froebel's Gifts: How the Kindergarten Movement Changed the American Familiy (2020)
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:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_604

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany Kaiserstr. 1, 53113 Bonn , Germany.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CRC Office ().