This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the Lanham Act of 1940, a heavily-subsidized and universal child care program that was administered throughout the U.S. during World War II. I begin by estimating the impact of the Lanham Act on maternal employment using 1940 and 1950 Census data...

In this paper, we examine the heterogeneous treatment effects of a universal child care (preschool) program in Germany by exploiting the exogenous variation in attendance caused by a reform that led to a large staggered expansion across municipalities. Drawing on novel administrative data from...

We study the impact of an extension of paid family leave from 3 to 4 years on child long- term outcomes. Using a difference-in-differences design and comparing the first-affected with the last-unaffected cohorts of children, we find that an additional year of maternal care at the age of 3, which...

In 2016 the Polish government introduced a large new child benefit, called "Family 500+", with the aim to increase fertility from a low level and reduce child poverty. The benefit is universal for the second and every further child and means-tested for the first child. Increasing out-of-work...

We estimate the policy impacts of the resumption of income thresholds for childcare benefits (CB) policy in April 2012 on female labor market participation, expenditure on childcare services, and child health outcomes using the Longitudinal Survey of Newborns in the 21st Century in Japan. We use...

We investigate the importance of various mechanisms by which child care policies can affect life-cycle patterns of employment and fertility among women, as well as long-run cognitive outcomes among children. A structural life-cycle model of employment, fertility, and child care use is estimated...

How parents respond to changes in the price of childcare is an important, though not fully understood, public policy question. Our paper provides new comprehensive evidence on how a home care subsidy jointly affects maternal labour market outcomes, childcare choices, and children's development....

The impact of children's early development status on parental labor market outcomes is not well established in the empirical literature. We combine an instrumental variable approach to account for the endogeneity of the development status with a model of non- random labor force participation to...

This paper combines multiple sources of information on early childhood development in a unified model for analysis of a wide range of early childhood policy interventions. We develop a model of child care in which households decide both the quantities and qualities of maternal and non-maternal...

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...