Saturday, 7 July 2018

Universal childcare: The potential to level the playing field between the rich and poor

a column by Thomas Cornelissen, Christian Dustmann, Anna Raute and Uta Schönberg for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Many countries operate universal childcare programmes that are open to all pre-school age children.

This column analyses data from Germany to show that attending universal childcare at age three improves the school readiness of children from immigrant and disadvantaged family backgrounds far more than of children whose parents have higher socioeconomic status.

Yet despite this potential to level the playing field between rich and poor, children who would gain the most from attending childcare early are also those who are least likely to attend. This calls for policies to encourage the enrolment of disadvantaged children in such programmes.

Continue reading

The study was done in Germany but I doubt that the findings would be very different had it been done in the UK.


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