eprintid: 10166215 rev_number: 7 eprint_status: archive userid: 699 dir: disk0/10/16/62/15 datestamp: 2023-03-10 09:40:21 lastmod: 2023-03-10 09:40:21 status_changed: 2023-03-10 09:40:21 type: article metadata_visibility: show sword_depositor: 699 creators_name: Kawarazaki, Hikaru title: Early childhood education and care: effects after half a century and their mechanisms ispublished: inpress divisions: UCL divisions: B03 divisions: C03 divisions: F24 keywords: Social Sciences, Demography, Economics, Business & Economics, Early childhood education and care, Inequality, Preschool, Mediation analysis, Return to education, MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT, PERSONALITY-TRAITS, YOUNG-CHILDREN, LIFE-CYCLE, AVAILABILITY, PRESCHOOL, POLICIES, MOTHERS, INTERVENTIONS, MEDIATION note: Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. abstract: The effects of early childhood education and care (ECEC) have been widely researched, but most studies focus on targeted or relatively short-term programmes. This paper investigates the long-term effects of a universal ECEC programme and underlying mechanisms. By exploiting differences in expansion rates of childcare institutions across Japan from the 1960s to the 1980s, I find a positive effect of ECEC on income at up to age 50. The overall effect is driven by a significant impact among women, who were disadvantaged at that time, while there are no adverse effects on others. Mediation analysis shows that an increase in wages leads to an increase in income, which is triggered by improved educational attainment and not an increase in labour supply. The results imply that a universal childcare system has the potential to reduce income inequality. date: 2022-06-09 date_type: published publisher: SPRINGER official_url: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-022-00899-w oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 2009541 doi: 10.1007/s00148-022-00899-w lyricists_name: Kawarazaki, Hikaru lyricists_id: HKAWA54 actors_name: Bracey, Alan actors_id: ABBRA90 actors_role: owner funding_acknowledgements: 20J14435 [Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)]; 20J14435 [Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research] full_text_status: public publication: Journal of Population Economics pages: 73 citation: Kawarazaki, Hikaru; (2022) Early childhood education and care: effects after half a century and their mechanisms. Journal of Population Economics 10.1007/s00148-022-00899-w <https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-022-00899-w>. (In press). Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10166215/1/s00148-022-00899-w.pdf