The Effect of Pre-Kindergarten Expansion on the Early Childcare Market

• In Event: When Work and Care Collide: Labor, Policy, and Equity in Early Childhood

Abstract

Over the past two decades, state policymakers have expanded access to free public pre-kindergarten with the goal of improving early education and school readiness. As more states offer free schooling for 4-year-olds, concerns have grown that these efforts may unintentionally disrupt the broader early childcare market that serves children from birth to age four. Recent research suggests that private childcare centers often cross-subsidize the cost of infant and toddler care with tuition from older, less expensive age groups (Brown 2019). This implies that increased public provision of pre-kindergarten could reduce the availability of care for younger children—particularly in low-income communities where families may struggle to absorb higher tuition costs.

This study uses a panel fixed effects design and exploits variation in pre-kindergarten expansion from 2001 to 2020 to estimate the impact on early childcare providers. To do this, I first create two measures of pre-kindergarten expansion. First, I compile the timing of state-level universal pre-kindergarten rollouts to create a categorical measure that reflects when policies are introduced and how they evolve over time to become more generous and inclusive. Second, I develop a continuous, county-level measure that captures the share of age-eligible 4-year-olds enrolled in public pre-kindergarten programs, using enrollment data from the Common Core of Data and population estimates to approximate local expansion.

I then use this variation to measure the effect of expansion efforts on the number of childcare establishments, employment levels, worker earnings, and tuition prices. I analyze these outcomes separately for private childcare centers and family childcare providers, and across lower- and higher-income regions. I use publicly publicly-available county level data from the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns and Non-employer Statistics and the Department of Labor’s National Database of Childcare Prices for this analysis.

Preliminary findings indicate that expanding public pre-kindergarten access for 4-year-olds is associated with declines in the number of private childcare centers, family childcare providers, and private childcare employment. While tuition prices for infants and toddlers remain unchanged, costs for 3- to 5-year-olds increase. These early results suggest that universal pre-kindergarten expansion in public schools may be crowding out private options and making care for young children more expensive and harder to access, especially for families with the greatest need. hese findings highlight the importance of considering which families and providers are most affected by public pre-kindergarten expansion and designing policies that support continued access to affordable, high-quality care for infants and toddlers. 

Author

• Katharine Sadowski, Stanford University
  Presenting Author