What is the current state of the child care sector? This paper answers this question focusing on the issues of access and affordability. The available evidence indicates that, contrary to popular perceptions, there is not an emerging crisis in the sector; supply is generally keeping pace with...

I propose a model of cultural transmission where children interact strategically with each other with the only desire to fit in, and parents purposefully socialize their children to their own culture. In the empirical section I estimate parental and peer effects using US teenager data on...

In 2007, seeking to increase female labor force participation and more generally ease burdens on working women, the Mexican government introduced an enormous expansion of a child care program: Estancias Infantiles para Apoyar a Madres Trabajadoras (EI). EI covers 90 percent approximately of the...

This paper investigates whether the religious identity of state legislators in India influences development outcomes, both for citizens of their religious group and for the population as a whole. Using an instrumental variables approach derived from a regression discontinuity, we find that...

Using data for 9, 13 and 15-year-old students from three different datasets (PIRLS-2006, TIMSS-2007 and PISA-2009), we investigate whether the age at school entry affects children school performance at the fourth, eighth and tenth grade levels. Since student's age in a grade may be endogenous,...

This paper studies peer influences in adolescents' deviant behaviors, including drinking alcohol, doing dangerous things, skipping school and physical fighting, by a binary choice network model with heterogenous rational expectations proposed in Lee et al. (in press). For a wide range of...

Many developed countries currently consider a move towards a universal child care program. The challenge in assessing the case for universal child care programs is that the evidence base is scarce. We analyze the staged expansion of subsidized, universally accessible child care in Norway. Our...

A growing literature establishes that high quality early childhood interventions targeted toward disadvantaged children have substantial impacts on later life outcomes. Little is known about the mechanisms producing these impacts. This paper uses longitudinal data on cognitive and personality...

The section presents a critical assessment of so-called outcome or displacement perspectives. Common to them is a preference – under the pretext of showing interest for children – for looking forward to adulthood. This was characteristic for psychology and has recently obtained focus by...