Does Early Child Care Help or Hurt Children's Development?

55 Pages Posted: 4 Oct 2014

See all articles by Christina Felfe

Christina Felfe

University of St. Gallen; University of St. Gallen - Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research (SEW)

Rafael Lalive

University of Lausanne - Department of Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research)

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.

Keywords: child care, child development, marginal treatment effects

JEL Classification: J13, I21, I38

Suggested Citation

Felfe, Christina and Lalive, Rafael, Does Early Child Care Help or Hurt Children's Development?. IZA Discussion Paper No. 8484, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2505346 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2505346

Christina Felfe (Contact Author)

University of St. Gallen ( email )

Bodanstrasse 6
St. Gallen, 9000
Switzerland

University of St. Gallen - Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research (SEW)

Varnbuelstrasse 14
St. Gallen, 9000
Switzerland

Rafael Lalive

University of Lausanne - Department of Economics ( email )

Batiment Internef
Lausanne, 1015
Switzerland

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
449
Abstract Views
1,613
Rank
118,241
PlumX Metrics