Does Early Child Care Help or Hurt Children's Development?
Series
IZA DP
Type
discussion paper
Date Issued
2014-09-30
Author(s)
Abstract
More children than ever attend center-based care early in life. We study whether children who attend center-based care before age 3 have better or worse language and motor skills, socio-emotional maturity, and school readiness just before entering primary school. In data covering about 36,000 children in one West German state, we use a marginal treatment effects framework to show how causal effects vary with observed characteristics of children, parents, and care centers and with unobserved preferences for center-based care. Early center-based care benefits children with less educated mothers or foreign parents. Benefits increase when parents have a preference for center-based care. Centers with small playgroups and with experienced, trained, or full-time working staff produce the best effects. A modest expansion of the number of places in early care centers improves children's development, whereas a strong expansion has no significant effects.
Language
English
Keywords
child care
child development
marginal treatment effects
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SEPS - Economic Policy
Refereed
No
Publisher
IZA
Number
8484
Start page
1
End page
55
Pages
55
Subject(s)
Eprints ID
208590
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
open.access
Name
FelfeLalive_IZA.pdf
Size
370.93 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
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