Preschoolers Enrolled and Mothers at Work? The Effects of Universal Pre-Kindergarten

Maria Fitzpatrick

No 08-001, Discussion Papers from Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Three states recently introduced Universal Pre-Kindergarten programs offering free preschool to all age-eligible children; policy makers in many other states are promoting similar programs. Using restricted-access data from the Census, together with year and birthday based eligibility cutoffs, I employ a regression discontinuity framework to estimate the effects of Universal Pre-K availability on overall preschool enrollment and maternal labor supply. Universal Pre-K availability increases statewide preschool enrollment by at least 14 percent but has little effect on the labor supply of most women. The exception is women residing in rural areas, whose probability of being employed increases by 20 percent.

Keywords: Preschool; Public Subsidies; Maternal Labor Supply (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I28 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/repec/sip/08-001.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Preschoolers Enrolled and Mothers at Work? The Effects of Universal Prekindergarten (2010)
Working Paper: Preschoolers Enrolled and Mothers at Work? The Effects of Universal Pre-Kindergarten (2008)
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:sip:dpaper:08-001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anne Shor ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).