Young children are thought to be vulnerable to separation from their primary caregiver. This raises concern about whether early childcare enrollment may harm child development. We use childcare assignment lotteries to estimate the effect of enrollment at age 1-2 on cognitive development in Norway. Estimates show significant gains in language and mathematics at age 6-7 and a substantial drop in scores below publicly set thresholds for low performance. Across subsamples, we find a pattern of stronger effects on underperforming groups. We find little support for childcare quality or family income as drivers of our results. This is a substantially revised version of the paper circulated as "Child Care Before Age Two and the Development of Language and Numeracy: Evidence from a Lottery." Thanks to the Oslo municipality for generously providing data, institutional detail, and feedback on the project, in particular Eli Aspelund, Thomas Bang, and Ragnhild Walberg at the Oslo City Council Department of Children and Education.

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We study an intervention providing free child care for children aged four and five.• We estimate the effect on the enrollment and parents' employment and education.• The intervention increased enrollment of children from immigrant families.• We find no support for effects on parental employment or education.• Children in intervention districts perform better on assessment tests at age seven. a b s t r a c tProficiency in the language spoken by the majority population may be crucial for the cognitive development of children from immigrant families. High-quality child care is believed to promote such language skills, and it is thus of concern that children from immigrant families are underrepresented in formal child care across OECD countries. How can we increase their participation, and can such participation improve family integration? We study an intervention in some districts of Oslo where children aged four and five were eligible for 20 h of free childcare weekly. Taking advantage of the intervention being available in some city districts and not in others, we estimate the effect of the intervention on the enrollment of children and on their parents' employment and education, using outcomes measured for the same family before and after the child's age of eligibility. We find that the intervention increased the participation for children from immigrant families by 15%. However, we do not find support for effects on parental employment or education. The performance in tests at school entry (age six) for children from immigrant families in city districts with free child care is better than that of similar children in comparison districts. Overall, our results suggest that subsidizing center based child care can improve the cognitive development of children from immigrant families.

All political parties in Norway agree that social inequalities in health comprise a public health problem and should be reduced. Against this background, the Council on Social Inequalities in Health has taken action to provide specific advice to reduce social health differences. Our recommendations focus on the entire social gradient rather than just poverty and the socially disadvantaged. By proposing action on the social determinants of health such as affordable child-care, education, living environments and income structures, we aim to facilitate a possible re-orientation of policy away from redistribution to universalism. The striking challenges of the causes of health differences are complex, and the 29 recommendations to combat social inequality of health demand cross sectorial actions. The recommendations are listed thematically and have not been prioritized. Some are fundamental and require pronounced changes across sectors, whereas others are minor and sector-specific.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractTheory and evidence point towards particularly positive effects of high-quality child care for disadvantaged children. At the same time, disadvantaged families often sort out of existing programs. To counter differences in learning outcomes between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, governments are pushing for universal child care. However, it is unclear how effective programs with universal participation may be at addressing the needs of disadvantaged children. We provide evidence on the long-run effect on schooling of mandating kindergarten at age 5-6. Our identifying variation comes from a reform that lowered school starting-age from 7 to 6 in Norway in 1997. The new program was designed as a low intensity kindergarten program, similar to voluntary child care programs available before mandating. Our precise DD estimates reveal hardly any effect, both overall, across subsamples, and over the grading distribution. A battery of specification checks support our empirical strategy.