Understanding day care enrolment gaps

Jonas Jessen, Sophia Schmitz and Sevrin Waights

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: We document day care enrolment gaps by family background in a country with a universal day care system (Germany). Research demonstrates that children of less educated or foreign-born parents can benefit the most from day care, making it important to understand why such enrolment gaps exist. Using a unique data set that records both stated demand and actual usage of day care we demonstrate that differences in demand cannot fully explain the enrolment gaps. Investigating supply-side factors using quasi-experimental designs, we find that reducing both parental fees and scarcity of places significantly decreases enrolment gaps by parental education but not by parental country of birth. We discuss implications for policy.

Keywords: child care; early education; inequality; socio—economic status; discrimination; synthetic control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-09-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1650.pdf (application/pdf)

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)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1650

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