IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp4561.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

No Child Left Behind: Universal Child Care and Children’s Long-Run Outcomes

Author

Listed:
  • Havnes, Tarjei

    () (University of Oslo)

  • Mogstad, Magne

    () (University of Chicago)

Abstract

There is a heated debate in the US, Canada and many European countries about introducing universally accessible child care. However, studies on universal child care and child development are scarce and only consider short-run outcomes. We analyze the introduction of universal child care in Norway, addressing the impact on children's long-run outcomes. Our precise and robust difference-in-difference estimates show that child care had strong positive effects on children's educational attainment and labor market participation, and also reduced welfare dependency. Subsample analysis indicates that children with low educated mothers and girls benefit the most from child care.

Suggested Citation

  • Havnes, Tarjei & Mogstad, Magne, 2009. "No Child Left Behind: Universal Child Care and Children’s Long-Run Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 4561, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4561
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ftp.iza.org/dp4561.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Herbst, Chris M. & Tekin, Erdal, 2010. "Child care subsidies and child development," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 618-638, August.
    2. Berlinski, Samuel & Galiani, Sebastian, 2007. "The effect of a large expansion of pre-primary school facilities on preschool attendance and maternal employment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 665-680, June.
    3. Michael Baker & Jonathan Gruber & Kevin Milligan, 2008. "Universal Child Care, Maternal Labor Supply, and Family Well-Being," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(4), pages 709-745, August.
    4. Julie Berry Cullen & Brian A Jacob & Steven Levitt, 2006. "The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(5), pages 1191-1230, September.
    5. Joshua D. Angrist & Kevin Lang, 2004. "Does School Integration Generate Peer Effects? Evidence from Boston's Metco Program," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1613-1634, December.
    6. Loeb, Susanna & Bridges, Margaret & Bassok, Daphna & Fuller, Bruce & Rumberger, Russell W., 2007. "How much is too much? The influence of preschool centers on children's social and cognitive development," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 52-66, February.
    7. Haegeland, Torbjorn & Klette, Tor Jakob & Salvanes, Kjell G, 1999. " Declining Returns to Education in Norway? Comparing Estimates across Cohorts, Sectors and Over Time," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 101(4), pages 555-576, December.
    8. Datta Gupta, Nabanita & Simonsen, Marianne, 2010. "Non-cognitive child outcomes and universal high quality child care," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 30-43, February.
    9. Berlinski, Samuel & Galiani, Sebastian & Manacorda, Marco, 2008. "Giving children a better start: Preschool attendance and school-age profiles," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1416-1440, June.
    10. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    11. Lundin, Daniela & Mörk, Eva & Öckert, Björn, 2008. "How far can reduced childcare prices push female labour supply?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 647-659, August.
    12. Fitzpatrick Maria D, 2008. "Starting School at Four: The Effect of Universal Pre-Kindergarten on Children's Academic Achievement," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-40, November.
    13. Paul W. Rhode & Koleman S. Strumpf, 2003. "Assessing the Importance of Tiebout Sorting: Local Heterogeneity from 1850 to 1990," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1648-1677, December.
    14. repec:ags:jaecon:37550 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gathmann, Christina & Sass, Björn, 2012. "Taxing Childcare: Effects on Family Labor Supply and Children," IZA Discussion Papers 6440, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    2. Felfe, Christina & Lalive, Rafael, 2012. "Early Child Care and Child Development: For Whom it Works and Why," IZA Discussion Papers 7100, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    3. Brilli, Ylenia & Del Boca, Daniela & Pronzato, Chiara D., 2011. "Exploring the Impacts of Public Childcare on Mothers and Children in Italy: Does Rationing Play a Role?," IZA Discussion Papers 5918, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    4. Bruno Arpino & Chiara D. Pronzato & Lara P. Tavares, 2012. "Mothers’ labour market participation: Do grandparents make it easier?," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 277, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    5. Berger, Eva M. & Spiess, C. Katharina, 2011. "Maternal Life Satisfaction and Child Outcomes: Are They Related?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 142-158, February.
    6. repec:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/696143 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Billari, Francesco C. & Galasso, Vincenzo & Profeta, Paola & Pronzato, Chiara, 2013. "The Difficult Case of Persuading Women: Experimental Evidence from Childcare," CEPR Discussion Papers 9682, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Emma Tominey, 2010. "The Timing of Parental Income and Child Outcomes: The Role of Permanent and Transitory Shocks," CEE Discussion Papers 0120, Centre for the Economics of Education, LSE.
    9. De Paola, Maria & Brunello, Giorgio, 2016. "Education as a Tool for the Economic Integration of Migrants," IZA Discussion Papers 9836, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    10. Yamauchi, Chikako & Leigh, Andrew, 2011. "Which children benefit from non-parental care?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1468-1490.
    11. Christina Gathmann & Björn Sass, 2018. "Taxing Childcare: Effects on Childcare Choices, Family Labor Supply, and Children," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(3), pages 665-709.
    12. Datta Gupta, Nabanita & Simonsen, Marianne, 2010. "Non-cognitive child outcomes and universal high quality child care," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 30-43, February.
    13. Emma Tominey, 2010. "The Timing of Parental Income and Child Outcomes: The Role of Permanent and Transitory Shocks," Discussion Papers 10/21, Department of Economics, University of York.
    14. Zhu, Guozhong & Vural, Gulfer, 2013. "Inter-generational effect of parental time and its policy implications," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 1833-1851.
    15. Joris Ghysels & Kim Vercammen, 2012. "The beneficiaries of childcare expansion," Working Papers 1202, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    16. Chris M. Herbst & Erdal Tekin, 2010. "The Impact of Child Care Subsidies on Child Well-Being: Evidence from Geographic Variation in the Distance to Social Service Agencies," NBER Working Papers 16250, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Janina Reinkowski, 2014. "Empirical Essays in the Economics of Ageing and the Economics of Innovation," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 53, January.
    18. Nina Drange & Kjetil Telle, 2010. "The effect of preschool on the school performance of children from immigrant families. Results from an introduction of free preschool in two districts in Oslo," Discussion Papers 631, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    19. C. Katharina Spieß, 2011. "Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Beruf – wie wirksam sind deutsche „Care Policies“?," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 12(s1), pages 4-27, May.
    20. Stauvermann, Peter J. & Ky, Sereyvath & Nam, Gi-Yu, 2013. "The Costs of Increasing the Fertility Rate in an Endogenous Growth Model," MPRA Paper 46381, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Adrien Bouguen & Deon Filmer & Karen Macours & Sophie Naudeau, 2014. "Preschool and Parental Response in a Second Best World: Evidence from a School Construction Experiment," Working Papers hal-01090361, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    child development; universal child care; long-run outcomes;

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4561. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Mark Fallak). General contact details of provider: http://www.iza.org .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.