State Pre-k and Parental Time Investments at Home

• In Event: Federal and State Investments in Early Childhood and Parent Outcomes

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the U.S. saw substantial growth in state investments in pre-K programs, with considerable variation in timing and intensity across states (Friedman-Krauss et al., 2025; Moran et al., 2026). These investments may alter children’s participation, the type of care they receive, and the intensity of early education exposure, potentially reshaping how parents allocate time to child-rearing at home. While greater access to public early education may reduce the total time parents spend with children, it remains unclear whether such reductions reflect substitution away from developmentally beneficial activities or reallocation toward other forms of engagement. This study provides new evidence on whether state pre-K crowds out or complements parental investments, a key mechanism underlying the effects of pre-K policy on children’s early learning.

This study examines whether state pre-K funding changes parental time use and whether these changes are consistent with substitution, addition, or complementarity between formal early education and home-based developmental inputs. We define substitution as declines in developmentally supportive parental activities with increased pre-K exposure; addition as no change in these activities; and complementarity as increases that reinforce skills developed in formal settings. We use a novel state-level panel of pre-K funding, enrollment, and program characteristics based on data collected by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) and harmonized into an analytic panel by Moran et al. (2026), linked to parental time diaries from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS).

We leverage variation in state pre-K funding across states and over time and implement a triple-difference design comparing parents of pre-K-eligible children (ages 4-5) to parents of slightly older children (ages 6-7), who are exposed to the same state environment but are not directly affected by pre-K eligibility (N = 18,299).

We estimate the effects of pre-K investments on total time spent with children as well as on specific categories of parental activities, including educational, recreational, and routine care. By distinguishing across types of time use, the analysis assesses whether public investments in early education crowd out or complement parental inputs in ways that are relevant for child development.

Author

• Eunho Cha, University of California, Irvine
  Presenting Author