Grit Mühler

Duration and Intensity of Kindergarten Attendance and Secondary School Track Choice

This paper investigates the relationship between kindergarten attendance and secondary school track choice in West-Germany. Our analysis is based on a panel of 12 to 14-year olds with information from age two on, drawn from the German SocioEconomic Panel (GSOEP) 1984?2005. We estimate binary probit models to assess the impact of the duration (in years) and the intensity (half-day or full-day) of kindergarten attendance. Our results indicate that kindergarten non-attendance is associated with a significantly lower probability to attend the highest secondary school track (?Gymnasium?). Further, full-day attendance is associated with a decreasing probability of attending the highest secondary school track for every duration of preschool child care. Thus, intensity seems to matter more than duration.

Dips and Floors in Workplace Training: Using Personnel Records to Estimate Gender Differences

Using personnel records from a single large German firm in the financial industry, this paper provides detailed evidence on the effect of age and the supervisors gender on gender differences in workplace training, holding constant various workplace characteristics. We implement an age-specific decomposition of the incidence and the duration of training into three terms: an age-specific coefficients effect, an age-specific characteristics effect, and an age composition effect. Our results show that the gender training gap changes with age. Females obtain less training during the early career, and their training occurs at higher age. The timing of the gender training gap seems to be driven by diverging career paths associated with employment interruptions. However, we find no evidence for catching-up effects after parental leave. A decomposition of the training gap including supervisor fixed effects reveals that supervisors do not treat male and female employees differently. Supervisors assign more training to all employees if they themselves participate more in training.

Informelle Förderangebote — Eine empirische Analyse ihrer Nutzung in der frühen Kindheit

In Deutschland nutzt uber die Halfte aller Kinder unter sechs Jahren informelle Forderangebote, wie z.B. ElternKind-Gruppen, Kinderturnen oder fruhkindliche Musik-und Kunsterziehung. Basierend auf den reprasentativen Mikrodaten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) untersucht der vorliegende Beitrag, welche Faktoren die Inanspruchnahme informeller Forderangebote bei Kindern im Vorschulalter in Ost- und Westdeutschland beeinflussen. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Kinder aus westdeutschen Haushalten mit hoherem Einkommen und hoherem mutterlichen Bildungsniveau eher informelle Forderangebote nutzen. Bei Kindern im Alter von 3–5 Jahren haben informelle Forderangebote eher einen komplementaren Charakter, d.h., sie erganzen den Besuch einer Kindertageseinrichtung. Die Analysen weisen ferner auf einen statistisch signifikanten Zusammenhang zwischen der Nutzung informeller Forderangebote und dem adaptiven Verhalten von Kindern hin: Kinder, die turnen oder schwimmen, weisen ceteris paribus hohere Entwicklungsmase auf als Kinder, die keine sportliche Fruhforderung erfahren. Unsere Untersuchung leistet damit einen ersten Beitrag fur die multivariate Analyse der Inanspruchnahme von informellen Bildungsangeboten ab dem ersten Lebensjahr bis zum Schuleintritt.

Consequences of Mixed Provision of Child Care – An Overview on the German Market

Universal child care that is available, affordable and of good quality is regarded as a key instrument of a countrys social and labor market policy. As full public involvement in the provision of child care is costly, licensing non-public providers can enlarges parental choice and relieve public funds. This paper analyzes the consequences of universal, mixed-market provision of child care for availability and quality by directly comparing public providers to various non-public providers such as welfare organizations, churches and commercial providers. Controlling for regional and socio-demographic differences in participation, results show that non-religious and in particular commercial providers serve the under three-year-olds and respond to the demand for full-day care. Furthermore, they employ more personnel with a tertiary education. Hence, commercial providers can - at least when covering rather low market shares - increase parental choice and contribute to the provision of high-quality child care.