Early Education, Early Returns: NYC’s Universal Pre-K and Short-Term Maternal Labor Gains

• In Event: State Policy Contexts and Inequality in Family Well-Being

Abstract

This paper estimates the immediate labor market effects of New York City’s 2014 “Pre-K For All” expansion, one of the largest rollouts of universal public pre-kindergarten in the United States. I study whether a high-access, high-quality preschool program increases maternal labor supply in an urban setting.

Using American Community Survey data from 2005 to 2019, I combine two difference-in-differences designs with a synthetic control approach to identify the effects of the policy on mothers’ labor force participation, employment, and hours worked. The analysis focuses on two groups: mothers whose youngest child is age four, who are most directly exposed to the policy, and mothers whose youngest child is between ages one and four, a broader group that provides a larger sample and yields lower-bound estimates of the policy’s effects. 

Across specifications, I find that universal pre-K increased maternal labor force participation and employment by roughly 4 to 4.5 percentage points. In the geographic difference-in-differences design, labor force participation rises by 4.41 percentage points and employment by 4.32 percentage points; in the age-based design, the corresponding estimates are 4.17 and 4.71 percentage points. Synthetic control estimates are similar in magnitude. I find no statistically meaningful effect on weekly hours worked, suggesting that the main margin of adjustment is entry into the labor force or employment rather than longer hours among those already working. 

The gains are concentrated among groups less likely to have had access to prior childcare subsidies. Effects are strongest for lower-middle- and middle-income mothers, married mothers in joint households, and mothers with some college or more education. By contrast, I find limited effects for low-income mothers, consistent with the possibility that many in this group were already served by programs such as Head Start before the reform. Placebo tests, covariate balance checks, and alternative treatment timing specifications support the main findings.

Taken together, the results suggest that universal pre-K can function not only as an educational investment in children, but also as an economically meaningful childcare policy that raises maternal employment in the short run.

Author

• Kazuma Wells, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  Presenting Author