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Early Child Care and Child Development: For Whom It Works and Why

SOEPpapers 536, 45 S.

Christina Felfe, Rafael Lalive

2013

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Abstract

Many countries are currently expanding access to child care for young children. But are all children equally likely to benefit from such expansions? We address this question by adopting a marginal treatment effects framework. We study the West German setting where high quality center-based care is severely rationed and use within state differences in child care supply as exogenous variation in child care attendance. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel provides comprehensive information on child development measures along with detailed information on child care, mother-child interactions, and maternal labor supply. Results indicate strong differences in the effects of child care with respect to observed characteristics (children's age, birth weight and socio-economic background), but less so with respect to unobserved determinants of selection into child care. Underlying mechanisms are a substitution of maternal care with center-based care, an increase in average quality of maternal care, and an increase in maternal earnings.

Topics: Family, Education



JEL-Classification: J13;I21;I38
Keywords: child care, child development, marginal treatment effects
Frei zugängliche Version: (econstor)
http://hdl.handle.net/10419/69908

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