The impact of introducing free & compulsory pre-primary education policy on mothers’ labor outcomes

Pre-primary education improves child health and development. By reducing caregiving constraints, access to pre-primary school may also facilitate the ability of parents to work. This is particularly true for women who disproportionately carry the care workload globally. However, few studies have explicitly assessed the potential for a national, free pre-primary policy to shift women’s paid employment in low and lower-middle income countries, and none from Africa. This study employs a natural experiment to estimate the effect of introducing free and compulsory pre-primary school on paid maternal employment. We use nationally representative economic survey data from seven African countries, focusing on the 2008 introduction of tuition-free and compulsory pre-primary school in Ghana. Using two-way fixed effects modelling, we find that the introduction of tuition-free and compulsory pre-primary education significantly increased the likelihood of being in paid employment for mothers of young children (OR 1.53); this translates into a 4.0 percentage point increase in paid employment. Thus, our study found positive impacts of providing free and compulsory pre-primary school on paid employment in Ghana compared to six African countries with similar parental leave policies that did not introduce free pre-primary school. Together with prior evidence that pre-primary school benefits children’s development, this makes a strong case for greater investment in national pre-primary school.