Understanding Day Care Enrolment Gaps

Jonas Jessen, Sophia Schmitz and Sevrin Waights

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2020, issue Forthcoming

Abstract: We document gaps in day care enrolment by family background in a country with a universal day care system (Germany). Research demonstrates that children of parents with lower educational attainment and children of migrant parents may benefit the most from day care, making it important to understand why such enrolment gaps exist. We carry out complementary decomposition and quasi-experimental analyses making use of a unique data set that records both parental wishes for day care and actual usage. Our decomposition shows that (a) provision-related factors (local shortages and the level of parental fees) explain at least as much of the gaps as differences in parental wishes for day care, and that (b) far more of the gap by parental education is explained (79%) than of the gap by parental migrant status (22%). Our quasi-experimental designs confirm that reducing both parental fees and shortages significantly decreases the enrolment gap by parental education but not by parental migrant status. We discuss implications for policy.

Keywords: child care; early education; family background; decomposition; discrimination; synthetic control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (50)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Understanding day care enrolment gaps (2020)
Working Paper: Understanding day care enrolment gaps (2019)
Working Paper: Understanding Day Care Enrolment Gaps (2019)
Working Paper: Understanding day care enrolment gaps (2019)
Working Paper: Understanding day care enrolment gaps (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:222990

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