Economic perspectives on the implications of public child care and schooling for educational outcomes in childhood and adult life

Child care and education are important inputs in the human capital production function. The research of Nobel prize winner James Heckman shows that skills are built from the early childhood on and increase the returns of later educational inputs, in short: skill begets skill. Therefore, it is crucial for a society to know how the public education system can support the skill development of children and thus its labor force’s skills of tomorrow. This thesis aims to provide knowledge on the effects of some important aspects of education policies. It comprises an introduction and four core chapters which cover microeconometric evaluations of child care and schooling reforms in Germany using unique administrative data and rich survey data. These empirical evaluations contribute to three understudied fields in the literature on individual returns to education: first, the intensive margin of child care, second, the quality of child care, and finally, denominational sorting and classroom composition.