Theory and evidence point towards particularly positive effects of high-quality child care for disadvantaged children. At the same time, disadvantaged families often sort out of existing programs. To counter differences in learning outcomes between children from different socioeconomic...

Young children are thought to be vulnerable to separation from the primary caregiver/s. This raises concern about whether early child care enrollment may harm children's development. We use child care assignment lotteries to estimate the effect of child care starting age on early cognitive...

Theory and evidence points towards particularly positive effects of high-quality child care for disadvantaged children. At the same time, disadvantaged families often sort out of existing programs. To counter differences in learning outcomes between children from different socioeconomic...

This paper assesses the relationship between cash transfers to families and subsequent childbearing. We take advantage of a cash-for-care (CFC) policy introduced in Norway in 1998, and compare the fertility behaviour of eligible and ineligible mothers over a four year period. Contrary to...

Proficiency in the language spoken by the majority population may be crucial for the cognitive development of children from immigrant families. High-quality child care is believed to promote such language skills, and it is thus of concern that children from immigrant families are...

This paper investigates how mothers’ decision to stay at home with young children affects their subsequent work careers. Identification is based on the introduction of the Cash-for-Care program in Norway in 1998, which increased mothers’ incentives to withdraw from the labor market when...

This paper investigates how mothers' decision to stay at home with young children affects their subsequent work careers. Identification is based on the introduction of the Cash-for-Care program in Norway in 1998, which increased mothers' incentives to withdraw from the labor market when their...

There is a heated debate in the US and Canada, as well as in many European countries, about a move towards subsidized, universally accessible child care. At the same time, studies on universal child care and child development are scarce, limited to short-run outcomes, and the findings are mixed....

We propose a general framework to unambiguously compare distributions functions in an economically interpretable way. Our framework provides complete ranking of any set of distributions and money metric interpretation of the social welfare level of a dominating distribution as compared to a...

Many developed countries currently consider a move towards a universal child care program. The challenge in assessing the case for universal child care programs is that the evidence base is scarce. We analyze the staged expansion of subsidized, universally accessible child care in Norway. Our...