We present experimental evidence that enabling access to universal early child care for families with lower socioeconomic status (SES) increases maternal labor supply. Our intervention provides families with customized help for child care applications, resulting in a large increase in enrollment...

Exploiting a rich panel data child survey merged with administrative records along with a pseudo-experiment generating variation in the take-up of pre-school across municipalities, we provide evidence of the effects on non-cognitive child outcomes of participating in large scale publicly...

We provide the first causal evidence of discrimination against migrants seeking child care. We send emails from fictitious parents to 18, 000 early child care centers across Germany, asking if there is a slot available and how to apply. Randomly varying names to signal migration background, we...

This is one of the few studies that estimates the effects of type of childhood care on academic achievement at higher grade levels by linking day care registers and educational registers. We use entire birth cohorts of ethnic Danish children, enrolled in either center based day care or family...

Children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) tend to benefit more from early child care, but are substantially less likely to be enrolled. We study whether reducing behavioral barriers in the application process increases enrollment in child care for lower-SES children. In our RCT in Germany...

We provide the first causal evidence of discrimination against migrants seeking child care. We send emails from fictitious parents to 18, 000 early child care centers across Germany, asking if there is a slot available and how to apply. Randomly varying names to signal migration background, we...

This paper investigates pre-teenage effects of the choice of type of non-parental child care at age three (preschool relative to more informal family day care). We exploit a Danish panel data child survey merged with administrative records along with a pseudo-experiment that generates variation...

The Nordic countries have remarkably high participation rates of mothers and a moderate decrease of fertility rates compared to other western countries. This has been attributed to the fact that the welfare state model and, especially, the family-friendly policies chosen in the Nordic countries...