Working Paper: NBER ID: w30653
Authors: Orazio Attanasio; Ricardo Paes de Barros; Pedro Carneiro; David K. Evans; Lycia Lima; Pedro Olinto; Norbert Schady
Abstract: This study examines the impact of publicly provided daycare for children aged 0-3 on outcomes of children and their caregivers over the course of seven years after enrollment into daycare. At the end of 2007, the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil used a lottery to assign children to limited public daycare openings. Winning the lottery translated to a 34 percent increase in total time in daycare during a child’s first four years of life. This allowed caregivers more time to work, resulting in higher incomes for beneficiary households in the first year of daycare attendance and 4 years later (but not after 7 years, by which time all children were eligible for universal schooling). The rise in labor force participation is driven primarily by grandparents and by adolescent siblings residing in the same household as (and possibly caring for) the child, and not by parents, most of whom were already working. Beneficiary children saw sustained gains in height-for-age and weight-for- age, likely due to the better nutritional intake they benefit from in daycare. Shorter term gains in beneficiary children’s cognitive development were also observed, driven primarily by a short term improvement in home resources and environments.
Keywords: public daycare; child development; labor market outcomes; Brazil; randomized control trial
JEL Codes: I30; I31; I38
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Winning the lottery for public daycare (H27) | Time children spend in daycare (J13) |
| Time children spend in daycare (J13) | Participation of caregivers in the labor market (J22) |
| Participation of caregivers in the labor market (J22) | Household income (D19) |
| Winning the lottery for public daycare (H27) | Household income (D19) |
| Winning the lottery for public daycare (H27) | Employment rate for grandparents (J26) |
| Winning the lottery for public daycare (H27) | Nutritional outcomes for children (I15) |
| Winning the lottery for public daycare (H27) | Cognitive development gains (I25) |