We provide experimental evidence that enabling access to universal early child care increases maternal labor supply and promotes gender equality among families with lower socioeconomic status (SES). Our intervention offers information and customized help with child care applications, leading to...

Private household expenditures on child care in centers have significantly risen: from an average of 98 euros per month in 2005 to just under 171 euros in 2015 for a child under three and for children three and older (“Kindergarten”1 age group), from 71 to 97 euros in the period between 1996...

In Germany, attendance in early childhood education and care (ECEC) centers has soared in the last twenty years, making them a key context in which children learn. For children from migrant backgrounds who speak a foreign language at home, participation in ECEC has the potential of providing...

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...

Although explicit discrimination in access to social programs is typically prohibited, more subtle forms of discrimination prior to the formal application process may still exist. Unveiling this phenomenon, we provide the first causal evidence of discrimination against migrants seeking child...

We investigate public preferences for equity-enhancing policies in access to early child care, using a survey experiment with a representative sample of the German population (n ≈ 4, 800). We observe strong misperceptions about migrant-native inequalities in early child care that vary by...

Why are children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) substantially less likely to be enrolled in child care? We study whether barriers in the application process work against lower-SES children - the group known to benefit strongest from child care enrollment. In an RCT in Germany with highly...

We analyze the timing of birth of the first three children based on German panel data (GSOEP) within a hazard rate framework. A random effects estimator is used to accommodate correlation across spells. We consider the role of human capital - approximated by a Mincer-type regression - and its...

In the last decade the available labor force has expanded in Germany-despite the decline in the working-age population. The reason: labor market participation has increased, for women in particular and older people in general. Also noticeable was a rise in qualification level because...