Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Costs of Daycare 0â??2 for Children in Advantaged Families
56 Pages Posted: 18 Apr 2016 Last revised: 10 Jun 2019
There are 3 versions of this paper
Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Costs of Daycare 0–2 for Girls
Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Costs of Daycare 0–2 for Girls
Date Written: February 2016
Abstract
Exploiting admission thresholds to the Bologna daycare system, we show using RDD that one additional daycare month at age 0â??2 reduces IQ by 0.5% (4.7% of a s.d.) at age 8â??14 in a relatively affluent population. The magnitude of this negative effect increases with family income. Similar negative impacts are found for personality traits. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis from psychology that children in daycare experience fewer one-to-one interactions with adults, with negative effects in families where such interactions are of higher quality. We embed this hypothesis in a model that lends structure to our RDD.
Keywords: child development, childcare, cognitive skills, daycare, non-cognitive skills
JEL Classification: H75, I20, I28, J13
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation