Early Childcare Expansion and Maternal Health

Abstract

This paper estimates the effect of increased early childcare availability on maternal health. We focus on a substantial expansion of early childcare in West Germany from 2006 to 2019. By matching county-level childcare attendance rates with individual data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we find that a 10-percentage point increase in childcare availability decreases mothers’ self-assessed health by 0.173 points on a one to five scale (19% of a SD). Detailed analyses of various health domains reveal negative effects on both physical and mental health as well as on satisfaction with health. One plausible mechanism for these effects is transmission of infections from children to mothers. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that increased childcare availability leads mothers to worry more about their children’s health. While early childcare expansions offer benefits in many dimensions like maternal employment and child development, our results suggest unintended negative effects on maternal health.