Does Starting Universal Childcare Earlier Influence Children’s Skill Development?

Abstract

As many developed countries enact policies that allow children to begin universal childcare earlier, understanding how starting universal childcare earlier affects children’s cognitive and noncognitive skills is an important policy question. We provide comprehensive evidence on the multidimensional short- and longer-run effects of starting universal childcare earlier using a fuzzy discontinuity in the age at starting childcare in Germany. Combining rich survey and administrative data, we follow one cohort from age 6 to 15 and examine standardized cognitive test scores, noncognitive skill measures, and school track choice in a unified framework. Children who start universal childcare four months earlier around age 3 do not perform differently in terms of standardized cognitive test scores, measures of noncognitive skills, school track choice, or school entrance examinations. We also find no evidence of skill improvements for children with low socioeconomic status, although we provide suggestive evidence that they may benefit from high-quality care. Our estimates refer to children who start childcare before they become legally entitled, for whom the literature would predict low gains to starting childcare earlier. We provide further evidence on this relationship between parental resistance to and children’s potential gains from childcare. Simply allowing children to start universal childcare earlier is hence not sufficient to improve children’s skill development, particularly for children with low socioeconomic status.

Does Grandparenting Pay off for the Next Generations? Intergenerational Effects of Grandparental Care

“…For a recent overview of various studies that mostly analyze these questions as associations, seeHank et al (2018).5 For Germany, see e.g Bach et al, 2019;Cornelissen et al, 2018;Felfe and Lalive, 2018,. who all show positive effects for children from lower socio-economic background in particular, whileKuehnle and Oberfichtner (2020) do not find such effects.…”

Center-Based Child Care and Differential Improvements in the Child Development Outcomes of Disadvantaged Children

“…The range included in the current study is much larger, 0 to 34 months. This is also a broader time span analyzed than the additional four months of universal preschool some German threeyear-olds received resulting from a legislative timing change (Kuehnle & Oberfichtner, 2020). Examining a longer exposure period can reveal if these findings based on a short duration are consistent for a broader range of time enrolled.…”

“…However, most of the studies of children under age three years are evaluations of mainly small-scale, specific center-based care programs. Exceptions are studies that use national level data from Chile (Narea et al, 2020a, b), Germany (Kuehnle & Oberfichtner, 2020) and the United Kingdom (Côté et al, 2013;Del Boca et al, 2018;Hansen & Hawkes, 2009) to show that center-based care can support cognition of very young children, particularly low-SES children.…”

Center-Based Care and Parenting Activities

“…Müller and Wrohlich, 2020) and child development (i.e. Havnes and Mogstad, 2011;Datta Gupta and Simonsen, 2012;Havnes and Mogstad, 2015;Blanden et al, 2016;Cornelissen et al, 2018;Felfe and Lalive, 2018;Kuehnle and Oberfichtner, 2020) with a few further studies looking at other outcomes like maternal well-being (i.e. Schmitz 2020), child abuse (Sandner and Thomsen, 2020) and fertility (i.e.…”