How childcare contributes to skill inequality in the United States and Norway

• In Event: 30620 - Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7: The Demography of Inequality

Abstract

Disparities in children's academic and social skills largely form before children enter primary school. Early childhood educational interventions are therefore promoted as a way to reduce educational inequality. Yet provision of public early childhood education and care (ECEC) varies across welfare regimes, resulting in differences in access to and enrollment in ECEC across income groups. We investigate the contributions of income-based enrollment gaps in ECEC to achievement disparities in Norway and the United States. Across both countries, we find ECEC plays both a disequalizing role, through differences in enrollment rates, and compensatory role, through heterogeneous treatment effects. We find no difference in selection into ECEC based on treatment effects.

Authors

• Rebecca Hannah Bier, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Tarjei Widding-Havnerås, University of Oslo

• Felix Elwert, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Ang Yu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

• Henrik Daae Zachrisson, University of Oslo