Effects of a large-scale program for the construction of daycare and preschool centers on cognitive skills and female employment

Marcelo Castro and Breno da Cruz

Education Economics, 2024, vol. 32, issue 6, 786-811

Abstract: This paper assesses the impacts of a large-scale program aimed at constructing daycare and preschool centers in Brazil named Proinfância, which funded new buildings in nearly 45% of the municipalities between 2008 and 2017. We find a significant increase in early education care in the jurisdictions that participated in the program more than a decade after it had started: 4 percentage points in the attendance rate for infants aged up to three and six percentage points for children aged 4 to 5. However, the improvements in public schools' scores in ‘Prova Brasil’, which is a national exam for elementary school children, are small (at most 1%). Despite this, the program significantly helped increase female labor force participation, especially considering low-educated workers, but also with a small magnitude (1 percentage point). The results suggest that a faster increase in the coverage of public infant education would lead to more pronounced effects on children's development and female participation in the workforce.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09645292.2023.2254516 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:edecon:v:32:y:2024:i:6:p:786-811

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEDE20

DOI: 10.1080/09645292.2023.2254516

Access Statistics for this article

Education Economics is currently edited by Caren Wareing and Steve Bradley

More articles in Education Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().