Advocates of a universal child care system offer a two-fold argument: Child care facilitates children's long-run development, and levels the playing field by benefiting in particular disadvantaged children. Therefore, a critical element in evaluating universal child care systems is to measure...

We study the impact of public child care on mothers' career trajectories, focusing on qualitative dimensions of career choices. Using an event study approach, we find that child care helps mothers to return to the labor market more quickly and that this effect is mainly due to an increase in...

This paper investigates whether the effects of affordable and easily available public child care on fertility and maternal employment depend on the career costs of children a woman faces. It builds on the idea that these costs vary by occupation and education. In a generalized Diff-in-Diff, I...