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.
(In press).
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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.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Early childhood education and care: effects after half a century and their mechanisms |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s00148-022-00899-w |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-022-00899-w |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | 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/. |
| 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 |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Economics |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10166215 |
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