The debate on the effects of child care policies on household and individual behavior is substantial but lacks a discussion of the unintended consequences of rising wages in the child care work sector. To address this gap in the debate, the relation between rising pay and formal child care...

Not only the quantity of formal daycare provision for young children, but also its quality has become an issue of political concern. This experimental study investigates how a hypothetical improvement in the quality of daycare facilities shapes normative judgements regarding daycare use and...

This paper proposes a dynamic structural model of labour market and childcare choices for couples within a collective model of decision making. We formalise explicitly the need for childcare as a function of the age structure of the children population in the household then examine the...

This paper provides evidence that low private contributions to highly subsidised day care constrain mothers from working longer hours. We study the effects of a reform that abolished day care fees in Germany on parental labour supply. The reform removed private contributions to highly subsidised...

This paper proposes a dynamic structural model of labour market and childcare choices for couples within a collective model of decision making. We formalise explicitly the need for childcare as a function of the age structure of the children population in the household then examine the...

Supporting working mothers to balance their work and childcare responsibilities is a central objective of maternal and parental leave policies. Nearly all countries offer some forms of maternity and family leave programs for childbearing on a national basis. This chapter reviews various types of...

This paper presents the results of a randomized study of a home visiting program implemented in Germany for low-income, first-time mothers. A major goal of the program is to improve the participants’ economic self-sufficiency and family planning. I use administrative data from the German...

This paper presents results from a randomized evaluation of a home visiting program for disadvantaged first-time mothers and their families implemented in three German federal states. I analysis the impact of the intervention on maternal employment, school attendance, child care use, fertility,...

This paper uses register based data covering the entire population of Danish children enrolled in preschool in 2006-2007 to investigate whether the gender composition of preschool staff members affects the timing of school start and subsequent academic performance. To estimate effects of the...

Because the value of preschool child care is under intensive debate among both policymakers and society in general, this paper analyzes the relation between preschool care and the well-being of children and adolescents in Germany. It also examines differences in outcomes based on child...