Sarah Cattan

Can universal preschool increase the labour supply of mothers

Since the 1970s, many countries have established free or highly subsidized education for all preschool children in the hope of improving children’s learning and socio-economic life chances and encouraging mothers to join the labor force. Evaluations reveal that these policies can increase maternal employment in the short term and may continue to do so even after the child is no longer in preschool by enabling mothers to gain more job skills and increase their attachment to the labor force. However, their effectiveness depends on the policy design, the country context, and the characteristics of mothers of preschoolers.Seit den 1970er Jahren haben viele Länder kostenlose oder hoch subventionierte Bildungsformate für Kinder im Vorschulalter eingerichtet, um ihre Lernund sozioökonomischen Chancen zu verbessern und Mütter zur Erwerbsarbeit zu ermutigen. Evaluationen zeigen, dass diese Maßnahmen die Mütterbeschäftigung nicht nur kurzfristig, sondern auch noch nach Ende der Vorschulzeit stärken können, indem sie den Qualifikationserwerb und die Arbeitsmarktbindung der Mütter verbessern. Die Wirksamkeit hängt jedoch von der Politikgestaltung, dem Länderkontext und den Merkmalen der Mütter von Vorschulkindern ab.

Identifying sibling influence on teenage substance behavior

We assess the extent to which the large sibling correlations in substance use are causal. Our primary approach is based on a joint dynamic model of the behavior of older and younger siblings that allows for family specific effects, individual specific heterogeneity, and state dependence. We use the model to simulate the dynamic response of substance use to the behavior of the older sibling. Overall, we find that substance use is affected by the example of older siblings but only a small fraction of the sibling correlation is causal.

Estimating the Production Function for Human Capital: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Colombia

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to significant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disadvantaged children aged 12 to 24 months at baseline. We estimate the determinants of material and time investments in these children and evaluate the impact of the treatment on such investments. We then estimate the production functions for cognitive and socio-emotional skills. The effects of the program can be explained by increases in parental investments, which have strong effects on outcomes and are complementary to both maternal skills and child’s baseline skills.

Free Childcare and Parents' Labour Supply: Is More Better?

Despite the introduction of childcare subsidies in many countries, the cost of childcare is still thought to hinder parental employment. Many governments are considering increasing the generosity of their childcare subsidies, but the a priori effect of such a policy is ambiguous and little is known empirically about its likely impact. This paper compares the effects on parents labour supply of offering free part-time childcare and of expanding this offer to the whole school day in England using an empirical strategy which, unlike previous studies, exploits both date of birth discontinuities and panel data. We find that the provision of free part-time childcare has little, if any, causal impact on the labour market outcomes of mothers or fathers. Increasing the number of hours of free childcare to cover a full school day, however, leads to significant increases in the labour supply of mothers whose youngest child is eligible, with impacts emerging immediately and increasing over the months following entitlement.