FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN: EFFECTS - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

JARDÍN DE KINDER DE DÍA COMPLETO: EFECTOS

ON MATERNAL LABOR SUPPLY

Abstracto
We examine the eﬀects of oﬀering full-day kindergarten as a re-
placement for half-day kindergarten on mothers’ labor supply us-
ing the rollout of full-day kindergarten in Ontario, Canada. Nosotros
ﬁnd no eﬀect on the extensive margin but found an eﬀect on
the intensive margin. En particular, we ﬁnd that access to full-
day kindergarten increases weekly hours worked and decreases
absenteeism among mothers with kindergarten-aged children.
This eﬀect is driven by speciﬁc subgroups, a saber, nonimmi-
grant mothers with low education levels who live in urban areas
and have only one child.

Elizabeth Dhuey

(Autor correspondiente)

Department of Management

universidad de toronto

Scarborough

toronto, Ontario M5S 2E8

Canada

elizabeth.dhuey@utoronto.ca

Jessie Lamontagne

Scotiabank

toronto, Ontario M5A 0E1

Canada

lamontagnejessie@gmail.com

Tingting Zhang

School of Labor and

Employment Relations

University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign

Champaign, IL 61820

zhangt@illinois.edu

https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00321

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

533

Full-Day Kindergarten Effects

INTRODUCCIÓN

1 .
En décadas recientes, the importance of high-quality learning and care during the early
years of life has received signiﬁcant attention. Como resultado, many jurisdictions world-
wide have implemented or expanded government-provided or -subsidized programs
for younger children before compulsory schooling begins. The reasoning is that public
child care and preschool programs have the potential to promote long-term economic
growth in two distinct ways. Primero, they may better prepare children for school, cual
can have a cascading eﬀect on their long-run human capital acquisition and subsequent
labor market outcomes (p.ej., Heckman 2006). Segundo, a more immediate eﬀect is that
children’s caregivers may be able to increase their labor force attachment and therefore
their lifetime earnings.

en este estudio, we evaluate the eﬀects of expanding universal public kindergarten
from a half-day (2.5 hours/day) to a full day (6.5 hours/day) on the labor market out-
comes of mothers. Beginning in September 2010 and with a progressive rollout over
the following four years, the Canadian province of Ontario implemented a reform of
early education to oﬀer full-day kindergarten in public schools to all children aged 4 y
5 años. Prior to the reform, the majority of children aged 4 y 5 years in Ontario at-
tended half-day kindergarten. While this rollout was planned rather than randomized,
based on a diﬀerence-in-diﬀerences approach certain factors in its implementation led
to variations over time and space that we can use to analyze how universal full-day
kindergarten has aﬀected the labor supply of mothers of age-eligible children.

Our estimation strategy in this paper relies on variation across schools in the
timing of the introduction of full-day kindergarten, to isolate its eﬀects on maternal
labor market outcomes. For this strategy to be valid, the introduction of full-day kinder-
garten must be exogeneous to other underlying trends in maternal labor market out-
comes that diﬀer between treated and untreated schools. To explore this issue, we take
two approaches. Primero, we use an event-study analysis to document that there are no
clear pre-trends in the outcome variables. We further explore this issue by examining
which school and neighborhood characteristics predict the timing of introducing full-
day kindergarten within particular schools.

This paper is the ﬁrst to report positive eﬀects on maternal labor outcomes of mov-
ing from half-day to full-day kindergarten in a large English-speaking education system.
Previous research has found only suggestive evidence (p.ej., Cannon, Jacknowitz, y
Painter 2006; Gibbs 2014) or focused on non-English speaking systems (p.ej., Haeck,
Lefebvre, and Merrigan 2015; Dhuey, Eid, and Neill 2020). This paper adds to the large
body of work on the eﬀects of early education programs on parental labor supply, en-
cluding literature related to child care subsidies and universal preschool, by providing
evidence of the eﬀects of adding additional schooling at the start of primary education.
We ﬁnd that the implicit subsidy of extending the length of day of universal public
school for 4-year-old children has no impact on labor force participation at the extensive
margin. Hacemos, sin embargo, ﬁnd evidence that some women are able to work longer hours.
Específicamente, we ﬁnd that having access to full-day rather than half-day school increases
the average number of hours worked per week for mothers with eligible-aged children
and decreases their rate of absenteeism from work. This eﬀect is driven primarily by
nonimmigrant women who live in urban areas, have only one child, and have only a
high school education or less.

534

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang

2 . E X P E C T E D E F F E C T S O F F U L L – DAY K I N D E R G A R T E N

A N D L I T E R AT U R E R E V I E W

The expansion of universal full-day schooling for 4- and 5-year-olds (lo sucesivo, full-day
kindergarten) was mainly sold to the public in Ontario based on the idea that the pro-
gram would increase school readiness for all children. Sin embargo, a meta-analysis of the
eﬀects of providing universal early childhood education and care arrangements across
many jurisdictions revealed mixed results, while also revealing that quality matters crit-
ically and gains are concentrated among populations of disadvantaged children (camioneta
Huizen and Plantenga 2018).

Care for preschool-aged children is subsidized in many ways worldwide, ranging
from providing free public universal education programs, increasing parental leave
(unpaid and paid), and providing various kinds of subsidy programs that reduce out-
of-pocket expenses for parents. Subsidy programs are often targeted at lower-income
familias, and the literature regarding the impact of these subsidies on maternal labor
supply decisions is mixed and generally inconclusive.1

To reconcile these results, one must rely on economic theory and contextual fac-
tores. The subsidization of care changes maternal labor supply by changing a mother’s
budget constraint. Por ejemplo, a free universal preschool program or child care sub-
sidy will increase a mother’s eﬀective wage rate (wage rate net of cost of care) y
this in turn will increase the opportunity cost of not working and remaining at home
with the child. Por lo tanto, on the extensive margin (how many people work), the ma-
ternal employment rate should not fall. Sin embargo, for a woman who would have already
been working regardless of the subsidization, the eﬀect on hours worked is ambiguous
(Cattan 2016). The contextual factors within a particular country may serve as a mod-
erator of these policy eﬀects;2 these may include, Por ejemplo, current maternal em-
ployment rates and current subsidization rates for child care. The scope of a policy to
increase maternal labor supply may be more limited in countries with very high female
employment rates and/or highly subsidized early child care systems. If aﬀordable child
care (either informal or privately paid child care) is already widely available, increased
subsidization might lead to little or no increase in maternal labor supply because this
will only crowd out other forms of nonparental care. Sin embargo, if low maternal employ-
ment is driven by a lack of aﬀordable child care, increased subsidization may encourage
more mothers to work, in turn increasing their attachment to the labor force in the long
term. With regard to the present investigation, the context is as follows: as of 2014, en
77.76 por ciento, Canada had the eighth-largest female labor force participation rate in the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 2019a), but was in
the mid-range in terms of net child care costs (OECD 2019b).3

The literature most relevant to this study is the body of work focusing on the ma-
ternal labor supply eﬀects of universal kindergarten programs for 5-year-olds and uni-
versal preschool programs for 4-year-olds in the United States, along with work fo-
cusing on the expansion of kindergarten programs in the United States and Canada
from half-day to full-day programs. Research has revealed that in the United States, el

1. See Cascio (2015) and Cascio, Haider, and Nielsen (2015) for informative discussions.
2. Cascio, Haider, and Nielsen (2015) provide an overview of six studies on maternal labor supply responses due

to changes in policies within diﬀerent countries.

3. Ontario’s labor force participation rate is close to the national average (Statistics Canada 2019).

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

535

Full-Day Kindergarten Effects

expansion of the primary school system to include half-day programs for 5-year-olds
increased the maternal labor supply most in terms of single mothers (gelbach 2002;
Cascio 2009; Fitzpatrick 2012). More recent research has focused on the expansion of
universal preschool programs for 4-year-olds in the United States with mixed results:
One study found little eﬀect on labor supply for most women (Fitzpatrick 2010) mientras
another found some positive eﬀect on labor supply (Sall 2014).

In another recent trend, governments have been extending the kindergarten school
day for 5-year-olds from a half-day to a full-day, despite little evidence on whether this
move will aﬀect the labor supply decisions of mothers. Cannon, Jacknowitz, and Painter
(2006) estimated the likelihood that a mother would work full-time if her child at-
tended full-day kindergarten, and found no statistically signiﬁcant lasting eﬀects when
the child moves into the ﬁrst or third grade. Similarmente, Haeck, Lefebvre, and Merri-
gan (2015) found no signiﬁcant labor market response among parents when full-day
kindergarten was introduced in Quebec. Sin embargo, Dhuey, Eid, and Neill (2020) transmisión exterior-
served small eﬀects on hours worked from the introduction of full-day kindergarten
in the francophone school system in Ontario in the 1990s and early 2000s. Addition-
ally, in a policy paper prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor, Gibbs (2014) focused
on changes implemented in the state of Indiana; a triple-diﬀerence analysis strategy
yielded evidence suggesting an increase in maternal employment.4

3 . K I N D E R G A R T E N R E F O R M I N O N TA R I O
Ontario has four diﬀerent publicly funded school systems/boards: English Public, En-
glish Catholic, French Public, and French Catholic. Además, aproximadamente 5 por-
cent of students in Ontario attend mostly religious (Protestant denominations) privado
escuelas (Card, Dooley, and Payne 2010). Schools are administered by school boards,
which receive funding from the province. Every school board in Ontario is governed by
a Board of Trustees, generally elected via municipal elections every four years.5 Each
school board also has a director of education who serves as secretary on the Board of
Trustees. All school board staﬀ report either directly or indirectly to the Director of Ed-
ucation. As governors of the school board, the two most important responsibilities of
boards of trustees are the development and monitoring of multiyear strategic plans,
and the hiring and performance management of directors of education. The Board of
Trustees also approves the school board’s annual budget. School boards receive funding
from the province almost entirely based on an educational funding formula, y el
Board of Trustees is responsible for ensuring the school board has a balanced budget
that reﬂects their strategic plan. During the rollout of the changes under consideration
aquí, it is possible that there was competition between schools within a school board
that may have aﬀected the timing of the implementation, but there is no evidence,
anecdotal or empirical, that this occurred. It is also very unlikely because the rollout
was planned to be swift and universal.

Parents can choose the school system to which they send their children, con
some restrictions based on language and religion. To attend the French Public or

4. DeCicca (2007) also presents descriptive statistics that suggest the percentage of mothers in the labor force is

higher when children have access to full-day kindergarten.

5. Exceptions include First Nation Trustees and Student Trustees, Hospital Board Trustees, and the Centre Jules-

Leger Consortium, but these unelected bodies make up a very small fraction of Trustees in the system.

536

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang

French Catholic system, at least one of the child’s parents must be a French-language
rightsholder;6 aproximadamente 4 percent of students attend schools operated by the
French Public or the French Catholic Boards (Card, Dooley, and Payne 2010). To en-
roll a child in a Catholic primary school (English or French), parents must be willing
to allow the child to be educated in a faith-based school and must request admittance
by the school board. Catholic families are always given priority, but some boards allow
non-Catholic families to send their children to Catholic schools if enrollment permits;
others have strict rules regarding religion, particularly in primary schools.7 Overall, el
vast majority of Catholic school students are Catholic, and there is little movement of
students between diﬀerent types of school boards after entry into kindergarten. Cada
school board deﬁnes school catchment areas, and prospective students are guaranteed
a place in the school that corresponds to their assigned school catchment area. El
boundaries of English Public and English Catholic school boards typically coincide in
more heavily populated areas.8

For children in Ontario, mandatory schooling starts in grade 1 at the age of 6
años. Sin embargo, 90 percent of all children in Ontario attend publicly funded kinder-
jardín, which is universally oﬀered through the public school system for two grades:
junior kindergarten for 4-year-olds, and senior kindergarten for 5-year-olds. The per-
centage of children attending both years of kindergarten is similar and has stayed stable
desde 2006 regardless of its being a half or full-day program.9 The school entry cutoﬀ
date is 1 January of the year but delayed entry or retention in early grades is virtually
nonexistent.10

The full-day universal kindergarten reform in Ontario was rolled out in English
Public and English Catholic school boards over a period of ﬁve years (2010–14). On-
tario also has approximately 600 French Public and French Catholic schools; these are
not included in the present analysis because they had previously implemented full-
day kindergarten (Dhuey, Eid, and Neill 2020), but French-language speakers are not
excluded from the analysis. The primary objective of the reform was to reduce the num-
ber of “at risk” children—that is, children who are identiﬁed as having low readiness
for school (Pascal 2009). Breaking the cycle of poverty by increasing investment in
education so that children born into poverty would not remain there was touted as

6. A French-language rightsholder is a parent or guardian who lives in Ontario, is a Canadian citizen and meets
at least one of the following criteria: (1) His/her native language is French, eso es, the ﬁrst language learned
and still understood; o (2) He or she has received his or her education at the elementary level in a French-
language education institution in Canada; o (3) He or she is the parent (guardian) of a child who has received
or receives his/her education at the elementary or secondary level in a French-language education institution
in Canada.

7. For examples, see enrollment requirements for Toronto Catholic District School Board (2017) or Catholic Dis-

trict School Board of Eastern Ontario (2017).
In our analysis, we exclude “specialty schools” in school boards that have signiﬁcantly larger or overlapping
catchment areas. These schools generally have specialty programs that draw students from across the school
board.

9. These numbers are based on Statistics Canada population estimates (Statistics Canada 2016a) and Ontario
Ministry of Education enrollment data (Ontario Ministry of Education 2020); 89 percent of all children at-
tended junior kindergarten and senior kindergarten in both 2006 y 2011 (Statistics Canada 2006, 2011a).

10. Although we are aware of no oﬃcial statistics on delayed entry or retention in early grades in Ontario, allá
is the possibility that some parents of children born in the fall (before the 1 January cutoﬀ) elect to have their
children start a year later, a phenomenon known as “redshirting.” This practice is banned in many school
boards and all available evidence suggests it is quite rare (McDiarmid 2013).

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

537

Full-Day Kindergarten Effects

a secondary aim in government publications (Government of Ontario 2010). A 2009
Ontario provincial government budgetary report stated that it would cost $1.5 billion to fully implement this full-day kindergarten reform, and that approximately 265,000 children aged 4 y 5 years would beneﬁt from this reform per year (Government of Ontario 2010). The ﬁnal cost, according to the Ontario Ministry of Education (2014), era $2.138 billion.

The rollout started with schools that had immediate capacity to double their kinder-
garten classroom space, and it also prioritized schools with high-needs students based
on the percentage of low-achievement and low-income students at each school.11 The
implementation of full-day kindergarten in Ontario began with the announcement of
the program in September 2009 and was complete by September 2014. In Septem-
ber 2010, 16.2 percent of English Public and English Catholic schools started to oﬀer
full-day kindergarten, seguido por 5.7 percentage points more in 2011, 25.4 porcentaje
points more in 2012, 24.7 percentage points more in 2013, and the remainder in 2014.
The initial implementation of the reform caused some friction, as some schools
lacked the physical capacity to accommodate their kindergarten cohorts for a full day,
and the initially planned rollout was based on forecasted renovation completion in
schools that had to retroﬁt existing rooms or build new ones.12 Additionally, the re-
form became a major point of contention in the period leading to the 2011 provincial
elecciones, with the Conservative Party promising to cancel it altogether. Due to this un-
certeza, Septiembre 2011 saw a rollout much smaller than initially planned. Following
a Liberal victory in the election, the time to project completion increased to ﬁve years
rather than three years as originally planned (Pascal 2009).

Concurrent with this rollout, the Ministry of Ontario started to require school boards
to oﬀer before- and after-school programs (for children aged 4–12 years) where demand
from parents and families was “suﬃcient.” School boards or third-party providers were
permitted to operate these programs, and school boards determined whether need was
“suﬃcient” by assessing demand as well as the viability of before- and after-school pro-
gramos; de este modo, schools and school boards had considerable latitude with regard to the
provision of before- and after-school child care.13 Our analysis of the introduction of full-
day kindergarten may reﬂect a composite eﬀect of the increased length of the school
day along with the increased probability of before- and after-school child care.

En general, the initial rollout plans were not random. Sin embargo, actual implementation
diﬀered considerably from planned implementation, mainly due to capacity constraints
(ability to open new classrooms) and political upheaval due to the provincial election.
Although capacity was considered during planning, even optimistic estimates of the
cost of the reform suggested that at most 35 percent of schools would be able to open
immediately, with the rest requiring some level of investment (Pascal 2009). As noted
arriba, children living in the assigned catchment area of a school are guaranteed access
if they request it, so schools scheduled to start oﬀering full-day universal kindergarten
para 4- and 5-year-olds could only do so if they had the capacity to enroll all potential
estudiantes. Cifra 1 presents the rollout in the largest school board in our sample, el

11. Prior to the rollout, many students attended half-day kindergarten, either in the morning or the afternoon.
12. Few mentions of this can be found in oﬃcial government documents but it was widely reported in the news

at the time (ver, p.ej., Hammer 2010).

13. See Ontario Ministry of Education (2019) for more details on policies and guidelines.

538

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

Nota: n/a indicates nonresidential areas (including municipal core and general employment zones).

Cifra 1. Rollout of Full-Day Kindergarten in the Toronto District School Board, By School Catchment Area

Toronto District School Board, illustrating the geographic variation within the board in
terms of the timing of implementation.

4 . DATA A N D D E S C R I P T I V E S TAT I S T I C S
The data used in this analysis come from several sources. We combine survey data
from the monthly Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS), administrative data from the
Ministry of Education, student test scores from Ontario Education Quality and Account-
ability Oﬃce (EQAO), as well as geospatial data provided by individual school boards
and Canada Post.

The Statistics Canada monthly LFS collects information on labor market outcomes.
We focus on mothers surveyed between September 2008 and August 2014.14 The main
advantage of these data is that we are able to precisely assign treatment year using
academic rather than calendar year, which has been problematic in previous research
(gelbach 2002). Para hacer esto, we aggregate all respondents surveyed between September
of a given year to the following August; the academic year 2010, Por ejemplo, runs from
Septiembre 2010 to August 2011.15

14. Aquí, “mother” is deﬁned as the female adult household member who either answered the survey or was
identiﬁed by the survey respondent as his spouse who lives in the household (our sample does not include any
same-sex couples).

15. Due to data limitations, we are not able to identify repeated sampling and treat each respondent as indepen-
dently sampled. Sin embargo, the LFS is designed to be used this way, as outlined in its methodology section
(Statistics Canada 2016b).

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

539

Full-Day Kindergarten Effects

We also use data collected by the Ontario Ministry of Education regarding when
each primary school began oﬀering full-day kindergarten and a measure of school ca-
pacity, as well as data from the Ontario EQAO, an independent agency that adminis-
ters provincial testing and provides information on grade 3 reading and math scores at
the school level. The EQAO data used in this analysis also include information on the
percentage of students in each school who need special education support and the per-
centage of students in each school whose ﬁrst language at home is neither of Canada’s
oﬃcial languages (English and French).

We use two important geospatial data sources to link all our data together: escuela
catchment areas and postal codes. Primero, we hand-collected school catchment area data
for all schools in Ontario, and then matched catchment areas to postal code data. Para
the vast majority of our data, the school catchment area is much larger than the postal
code area, so we match many postal code areas to a given school catchment area,16 como
shown in Appendix ﬁgure A.1.17 Each speciﬁc school catchment area in a school board
includes many postal codes, and catchment boundaries generally follow postal code
boundaries. Próximo, we link the kindergarten full-day implementation year to each postal
código, which allows us to assign each mother who lives in a particular postal code to a
kindergarten full-day implementation year. We are able to match 250,676 postal codes
con 3,322 escuelas (English Public and English Catholic) in Ontario, a match rate of
89.8 por ciento.

Administrative data from the Ontario Ministry of Education and EQAO are linked
to each school using board and school identiﬁer numbers. Labor force information is
linked to the postal code based on each survey respondent’s residential address. Somos
able to assign a postal code to respondents for 93 percent of households in our sample,
and then use this geographic identiﬁer to link households to school catchment areas.
El restante 7 percent did not provide a postal code when surveyed or the postal
code could not be matched to a school. Through this process, we are able to identify
the academic year (de 2010 a 2014) during which the vast majority of households
were ﬁrst oﬀered full-day kindergarten in Ontario.18 Our ﬁnal dataset includes 25,500
mothers, y 1,340 schools.19

We restrict our sample to mothers aged 18–55 years at the survey date with their
youngest own child aged 4 años. We only know the age of the youngest child in years
in which the survey data were collected. We exclude from the sample mothers of 3- y
5-year-olds—admission to school in Ontario is based on the age of the child in January,
meaning some children start junior kindergarten at three years and consequently start
calificación 1 en 5 años; the status of these children (with regard to treatment) is uncertain.

16.

In rural areas, postal codes can cover a very large area, and in some cases one postal code area encompasses
multiple catchment areas. The matching rule is that a postal code is matched to a catchment area if the catch-
ment area covers at least 75% of the postal code area. Our results are similar if we exclude postal codes that
encompass two or more catchment areas and are available upon request.

17. Appendix ﬁgure A.1 is available in a separate online appendix that can be accessed on Education Finance and

Policy’s web site at https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00321.

18. The remaining schools are French Public and French Catholic schools, which rolled out kindergarten over a
diﬀerent schedule in the late 1990s, as well as English Public and English Catholic schools who started oﬀering
full-day kindergarten in the academic year 2014. We did not have data for the full academic year due to a large
structural change in the LFS.

19. Sample sizes for the LFS are rounded to comply with conﬁdentiality requirements of Statistics Canada Re-

search Data Centre.

540

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang

Mesa 1. Mothers’ Labor Market Outcomes, Characteristics of Mothers, Neighborhood, and Schools

Mothers’ labor market outcomes

Labor force participation

Employed

Full-time | employment

Weekly hours worked

Weekly earnings (registro)

Absent from work

Mothers’ characteristics

Age

Only has one child

Immigrant

High school or lower education

Single

Neighborhood characteristics

% individuals holding a BA+ degree

Labor force participation of male

without children

Urban

School characteristics

% students in the school who met
provincial standards in math

% students in the school who met
provincial standards in reading

% special needs students

% students who do not speak official

language at home

School capacity measure

By Year of Full-day Kindergarten Adoption

All Years

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

0.763
(0.425)

0.705
(0.456)

0.791
(0.407)

0.790
(0.400)

0.740
(0.440)

0.720
(0.450)

0.763
(0.425)

0.687
(0.464)

0.788
(0.409)

0.730
(0.450)

0.680
(0.470)

0.820
(0.390)

33.330
(11.010)

32.000
(16.900)

32.747
(10.784)

34.600
(16.500)

6.607
(0.727)

0.204
(0.403)

36.200
(5.400)

0.285
(0.451)

0.377
(0.485)

0.229

0.420

0.081
(0.273)

0.307
(0.189)

0.850
(0.141)

0.891
(0.312)

0.671
(0.153)

0.611
(0.145)

0.157
(0.103)

0.250
(0.254)

0.912
(0.375)

6.480
(0.660)

0.216
(0.411)

35.600
(4.600)

0.290
(0.460)

0.320
(0.470)

0.320

0.470

0.080
(0.271)

0.260
(0.190)

0.840
(0.170)

0.882
(0.322)

0.600
(0.170)

0.530
(0.130)

0.160
(0.100)

0.320
(0.300)

0.770
(0.190)

6.625
(0.709)

0.208
(0.406)

36.797
(5.201)

0.273
(0.446)

0.372
(0.483)

0.220

0.414

0.077
(0.267)

0.292
(0.181)

0.863
(0.131)

0.873
(0.333)

0.665
(0.156)

0.601
(0.137)

0.141
(0.092)

0.252
(0.259)

0.974
(0.582)

6.670
(0.670)

0.188
(0.391)

36.500
(5.500)

0.270
(0.440)

0.270
(0.450)

0.270

0.450

0.101
(0.301)

0.250
(0.150)

0.850
(0.130)

0.904
(0.333)

0.650
(0.140)

0.590
(0.150)

0.180
(0.110)

0.200
(0.240)

0.880
(0.260)

0.790
(0.400)

0.720
(0.450)

0.870
(0.340)

36.100
(7.400)

6.870
(0.530)

0.178
(0.383)

36.500
(5.200)

0.270
(0.450)

0.270
(0.440)

0.270

0.440

0.107
(0.309)

0.310
(0.200)

0.850
(0.130)

0.902
(0.294)

0.680
(0.170)

0.650
(0.150)

0.160
(0.110)

0.290
(0.290)

0.890
(0.260)

0.780
(0.420)

0.770
(0.420)

0.840
(0.360)

35.300
(8.800)

6.790
(0.720)

0.174
(0.379)

37.000
(5.100)

0.300
(0.460)

0.190
(0.390)

0.190

0.390

0.050
(0.218)

0.350
(0.210)

0.850
(0.200)

0.886
(0.297)

0.690
(0.160)

0.670
(0.140)

0.160
(0.100)

0.210
(0.200)

1.060
(0.310)

0.800
(0.400)

0.748
(0.434)

0.800
(0.400)

34.002
(10.587)

6.667
(0.765)

0.251
(0.434)

36.285
(5.103)

0.282
(0.450)

0.350
(0.477)

0.190

(0.392)

0.070
(0.256)

0.339
(0.207)

0.834
(0.172)

0.894
(0.307)

0.665
(0.157)

0.645
(0.146)

0.180
(0.107)

0.230
(0.233)

0.882
(0.283)

Notas: Mothers’ labor market outcome, mothers’ characteristics, and neighborhood characteristics data are from the Canadian Labour Force
Survey. School characteristics were obtained from the Ministry of Education and the Ontario Education Quality and Accountability Office.
The data were linked using geospatial data provided by school boards and from Canada Post. All summary statistics are weighted using
sample weights provided by Statistics Canada. The sample includes only mothers (ages 18—55 years) surveyed between September 2008
and August 2014 whose youngest child is 4 years old.

The descriptive statistics in table 1 show the average labor force participation among
mothers across years is 76.3 por ciento, with the overall average employment rate of 70.5
percent for this group. The data reveal that of the mothers in our sample, 79.1 por ciento
work full-time conditional on employment, and the average weekly hours worked is

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

541

Full-Day Kindergarten Effects

33.3, with the log of weekly earnings of 6.61. Absence from work refers to whether
an individual who is working full-time is absent from work at any point during the
reference week. According to Statistics Canada (2015), roughly a third of these absences
are due to personal or family responsibilities. In our sample, we ﬁnd that 20.4 por ciento
of mothers with a 4-year-old are absent from work at some point in the reference week.
Reducing absenteeism is one of the ways that policy makers believe providing full-
day kindergarten can help the labor force: Children spending more time in primary
education is expected to result in lower absenteeism among parents. According to one
estudiar, “improving the availability of child care [preschool] could save employers billions
of dollars from avoided employee absences” (Brown et al. 2013, pag. 5).

The average mother in our sample is 36 years old and has two children: 37.7 por ciento
of mothers are immigrants, 22.9 percent have not completed education at a level that
exceeds high school, y 8.1 percent are single. At the neighborhood level, 30.7 por ciento
of respondents (or adult household members) have at least a bachelor’s degree,
85.0 percent of childless men are in the workforce, y 89.1 percent of respondents
live in urban areas. The average school matched to the mothers in our sample has
a 67.1 percent pass rate on EQAO math, a 61.1 percent pass rate on EQAO reading,
15.7 percent of students have special needs, y 25.0 percent of students do not speak
an oﬃcial language (English or French) at home.20 The average school capacity mea-
sure is 91.2 por ciento, which indicates that the average school has room for 8.8 por ciento
more students based on the number of students allocated for each school.

There is some variation in all our outcome measures across time, as can been seen
in the remaining columns of table 1 when the summary statistics are calculated by catch-
ment level by year of full-day kindergarten adoption. We ﬁnd that the education levels
are lower for mothers living in neighborhoods deﬁned by the catchment areas that
adopted full-day kindergarten in earlier years. Además, academic achievement lev-
els as measured by EQAO standardized exams are also lower during earlier years of
adoption. Cuadro A.1 (available in the online appendix) presents the summary statistics
by catchment level by year of kindergarten adoption and by whether the household
was assigned to a treated school (FDK) or a nontreated school (NO FDK). As shown
in the table, for each year, students in the treated schools generally scored lower on
the EQAO standardized exams and constituted a larger fraction who do not speak En-
glish or French at home. Table A.2 in the online appendix provides some background
summary statistics of mothers’ labor market outcomes, and characteristics of neighbor-
hoods and schools by subgroup.

5 . E M P I R I C A L S T R AT E G Y
The goal of this research is to estimate how moving from half-day to full-day universal
kindergarten aﬀects the labor market outcomes of mothers with eligible-aged children.
We use a diﬀerence-in-diﬀerences estimation strategy with pooled cross-sectional data
spanning years 2008 a 2014 that exploits the rollout of the kindergarten reform.

20. The EQAO results are matched to schools with a lag, significado, Por ejemplo, that the results from the academic
año 2010 are assigned to the schools as their results for the academic year 2011; we did it this way to reﬂect
the fact that if we think parents might select a school based on EQAO results, they would be unable to predict
the current year’s result before enrolling their children.

542

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang

We estimate using the following equation:

(cid:2)
Yist = α + βFDKst + X
él

(cid:2)
δ + S
st

(cid:2)
Fi + norte
st

η + Tt + Cs + εist,

(1)

where Yist denotes the maternal labor market outcomes for individual i assigned to
school s in school year t, which include indicator variables for maternal labor force par-
ticipation, employment, full-time employment and absenteeism, as well as the num-
ber of weekly hours of work, and the log of weekly earnings. FDKst is the treatment
status and corresponds to an indicator variable equal to one if a mother’s household is
assigned to a school in the English Public Board that oﬀers universal full-day kinder-
garten in a given year and zero otherwise. X (cid:2)
it is a vector of individual-level maternal
control variables: mother’s age, marital status, immigration status, level of education,
and number of children. S(cid:2)
st is a vector of time-varying school-level controls: a capacity
measure indicating the ratio of existing students to available space in each school, el
percentage of students in the school who met provincial standards in math and reading
in grade 3 EQAO tests in the previous academic year, the percentage of students in the
school whose ﬁrst language is neither English nor French, and the percentage of stu-
dents in the school with special needs.21 N(cid:2)
st is a vector of neighborhood-level controls
made up of the percentage of university-educated residents, labor force participation
rate of childless males, and a rural-urban indicator.22 We also include school year ﬁxed
efectos (Tt) to capture unobserved shocks common to all schools in Ontario in a given
school year along with school ﬁxed eﬀects (Cs) to capture unobserved diﬀerences com-
mon to a geographic area associated with each school. School year is deﬁned as starting
in September of each year, and εist is the usual error term.23

We estimate linear probability models (for the probability of maternal labor force
participación, employment, full-time employment, and absenteeism) and ordinary least
squares models (for the number of weekly hours, and the log of weekly earnings) como
our main speciﬁcations.24 In this model, the β is the parameter of interest and can be
interpreted as the change in maternal labor market outcomes associated with having
access to the universal full-day kindergarten program in a local English Public school.
In the diﬀerence-in-diﬀerences speciﬁcation, identiﬁcation of β comes from the devi-
ation from the trend in labor supply outcomes of mothers with eligible-aged children
whose household is assigned to a school with full-day kindergarten relative to moth-
ers with eligible-aged children whose household is assigned to a school where full-day
kindergarten is not oﬀered. If we believe the deviations from trend are unrelated to all
other unobserved characteristics, then the eﬀect we observe is causal.25

21. EQAO tests are administered to all children in the province in grade 3 and are scored on a scale from 1 a 4;

the provincial standard for passing is 3 or higher.

22. Aquí, we deﬁne neighborhood as a forward sortation area (FSA)—an area that is characterized as having the
same ﬁrst three digits in the postal code. Neighborhood variables were calculated from the LFS (aggregated at
the FSA level). School characteristics were obtained from the Ontario Ministry of Education and EQAO.
23. Given the structure of the data, one might be concerned about possible bias of the standard errors caused by
serial correlation. To address these concerns, we cluster our error terms at the school level, eso es, we allow for
arbitrary serial correlation and heteroscedasticity for mothers whose households are assigned the same school
based on their geographic location.

24. We also ran the speciﬁcation with a probit model and obtained similar results (results are available upon

request).

25. Some research in this area has used a triple diﬀerence framework to estimate the eﬀect on labor supply. Y-
fortunately, in the context of this policy rollout, we do not have a natural control group that is fully untreated by

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

543

Full-Day Kindergarten Effects

β can be interpreted as an intent-to-treat (ITT) eﬀect, because we observe only
whether a mother’s household is assigned a school that oﬀers full-day kindergarten,
not whether her child actually attends full-day kindergarten that year. The ITT estimate
represents a lower bound on the eﬀects of the treatment on the treated (the eﬀect of
having a child in full-day rather than half-day kindergarten).

A mother can decline treatment in three ways: by sending her child out of catch-
ment to a school that does not yet oﬀer full-day kindergarten, by keeping her child
home an extra year, or by sending her child to a school in a diﬀerent type of school
board.26 A challenge to our identiﬁcation relates to the possibility that mothers use the
availability of kindergarten as the reason to send their child to a speciﬁc school, thus se-
lecting into treatment. Parents in Ontario can send their children to a school that is not
their assigned school if the particular school requested has space to accommodate more
niños. Each board has slightly diﬀerent rules regarding optional attendance but most
follow these general rules. During the end of the calendar year, school boards review
preliminary enrollment projections and decide whether each school in their board is
open or closed to optional attendance. Parents are then allowed to apply in December
and January for the following September enrollment to schools that are only accepting
optional-attendance students. Applications for junior and senior kindergarten are of-
ten not approved until the third week of September after the ﬁnal school enrollment
numbers are conﬁrmed. Por lo tanto, there is a lot of uncertainty around placement into
nonassigned schools that lasts into the school year. Desafortunadamente, there are no pub-
lished numbers on the percentage of kindergarten children attending a school that is
not their assigned school. Sin embargo, anecdotal evidence regarding this issue suggests
that the numbers are small. Además, policies on attending diﬀerent schools are
idiosyncratic to each school board and many boards do not even allow optional atten-
dance for kindergarten because it is not compulsory. Busing is not available to students
who utilize optional attendance. Selecting into optional attendance, si está disponible, would
require students to travel farther to attend school, so they would be reliant on parents
for transportation; we posit that few mothers trying to optimize their labor market op-
portunities would select into transporting their child to and from school.

We cannot ensure that mothers were not selecting into given locales given the
fact that the speciﬁc area oﬀered full-day kindergarten. De este modo, it is possible that the
provision of full-day kindergarten did not lead to changes in labor market outcomes
but rather that mothers who already want to work select into areas that oﬀer full-day
kindergarten—meaning mothers who are less likely to work full time anyway are more
likely to live in areas without full-day kindergarten. This is a limitation of this study, pero
it is unlikely that mothers would move residence or engage in optional attendance for
the purpose of employment and thereby optimize maternal labor supply. This is also

the policy. Sin embargo, we ran a triple diﬀerence model using mothers with 2-year-olds and untreated 6-year-olds
as the control group as a robustness check (mira la sección 6) and obtained similar results. It is important to note
that using children in other Canadian provinces as a comparison group is unlikely to improve on these results,
as labor trends and child care policies diﬀer markedly by province.

26. We are not concerned with the case that some mothers might not know about the availability of full-day kinder-
garten in their assigned school, which is extremely unlikely. The reform itself was very widely publicized, y
apenas 90 percent of children in Ontario attend kindergarten, based on Statistics Canada population estimates
(Statistics Canada 2006, 2011a).

544

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang

supported by the fact that actual implementation diﬀered greatly from planned imple-
mentation, so the particular schools that were expected to oﬀer full-day programing
often changed at the last moment, and the diﬃculties involved in the implementation
were widely known to the public. En general, it is unlikely a mother would move or engage
in optional attendance based on the planned implementation schedule. Sin embargo,
we do include controls for observable characteristics that may be associated with se-
lection into treatment in that context (p.ej., more educated mothers might be better
informed and have stronger labor force attachments) and ﬁnd the results are robust to
the inclusion.

We also include controls for the determinants of rollout (high-needs schools as de-
ﬁned by the Ministry of Education were targeted ﬁrst, conditional on capacity; alto
needs are deﬁned based on a combination of low test scores and low income). As shown
en la figura 1, which presents the rollout of the reform for the Toronto District School
Board (the largest in Ontario), there was no obvious systematic geographic pattern in
the timing of implementation, with early- and late-implementation schools spread rel-
atively evenly over the whole city. This lack of apparent pattern is consistent across our
conjunto de datos, so it is likely the capacity constraint provided a level of randomness to the im-
plementation that supports our quasi-experimental strategy.

Sin embargo, given the planned aspect of the rollout, we would expect areas that have
more at-risk students and more capacity would adopt full-day kindergarten earlier. Fol-
lowing Hoynes and Schanzenbach (2010, 2012), we can measure this by taking school
and neighborhood data from 2009 (before the announcement of the program) to pre-
dict the timing of the school’s adoption of full-day kindergarten. The dependent variable
is the year in which the school started full-day kindergarten. Schools that adopted full-
day kindergarten in 2010 are given a dependent variable that equals 1, schools in 2011 son
assigned 2 for the dependent variable, etcétera. The independent variables include all
of the school and neighborhood characteristics listed in table 1. Mesa 2 presents the re-
sults.27 Negative coeﬃcients indicate the school and neighborhood characteristics pre-
dict an earlier roll-out date. We ﬁnd that schools with a higher percentage of students
who are special needs or who do not speak either French or English at home implement
full-day kindergarten earlier. We also ﬁnd that the higher the school capacity measure
(which indicates less space in the school)—as well as schools in neighborhoods with
higher percentages of individuals who have a bachelor’s degree or greater—implement
full-day kindergarten later.28 Similar to Hoynes and Schanzenbach (2010, 2012), nosotros
ﬁnd that the timing of the introduction of full-day kindergarten is predicted by a few
observed characteristics. Sin embargo, we also similarly ﬁnd that most of the variation re-
mains unexplained.

This analysis focuses on estimating the ITT eﬀect of full-day kindergarten in the En-
glish Public system in Ontario. As noted above, the Ontario public schooling system is
complex, but the majority of students attend English Public schools. We also estimate
the ITT eﬀect of the second-largest school system, English Catholic schools, later in

27. We also ran a diﬀerent speciﬁcation in which an indicator for full-day kindergarten implementation is re-
gressed on the time-varying control variables. These results can be found in table A.3, which is available in the
online appendix.

28. Corroborating evidence of these trends can be seen in the summary statistics provided in table A.1 in the online

appendix.

D
oh
w
norte
oh
a
d
mi
d

F
r
oh
metro
h

t
t

pag

:
/
/

d
i
r
mi
C
t
.

metro

i
t
.

mi
d
tu
mi
d
pag
a
r
t
i
C
mi
–
pag
d

F
/

1
6
4
5
3
3
1
9
6
5
2
5
4
mi
d
pag
_
a
_
0
0
3
2
1
pag
d

b
y
gramo
tu
mi
s
t

oh
norte
0
7
S
mi
pag
mi
metro
b
mi
r
2
0
2
3

545

Full-Day Kindergarten Effects

Mesa 2. Determinants of Full-Day Kindergarten Start Date Using 2009 School Level Data

% students in the school who met provincial standards in math

% students in the school who met provincial standards in reading

% special needs students

% students who do not speak official language at home

School capacity measure

Urban

% individuals holding a BA+ degree

Labor force participation of male without children

Percentage of women with one child

Immigrant

Age

Single

High school or lower education

Observaciones
R2

Year of Adoption

0.504
(0.771)

0.283
(0.831)
−1.186**
(0.505)
−0.877**
(0.433)
0.696***
(0.235)
−0.136
(0.244)
1.200***
(0.430)
−0.561
(0.470)
−0.260
(0.172)

0.084
(0.171)
−0,009
(0.008)

0.283
(0.189)
−0,061
(0.155)

12,000

0.037

Notas: Standard errors in parenthesis clustered at the school level. The number of observations is
rounded to the nearest 100 according to vetting requirements of the Statistics Canada Research
Data Centre. Year of adoption equals 1 for schools that adopted full-day kindergarten in 2010,
2 for adoption in 2011, 3 for adoption in 2012, 4 for adoption in 2013, y 5 for adoption in
2014. Data are from the Canadian Labour Force Survey, the Ontario Ministry of Education, y
the Ontario Education Quality and Accountability Office. The data were linked using geospatial
data provided by school boards and from Canada Post. All summary statistics are weighted using
sample weights provided by Statistics Canada. The sample includes only mothers (ages 18—55
años) surveyed between September 2008 and August 2014 whose youngest child is 4 years old.
Labor force participation, empleado, full-time employment, and absent from work are all indicator
variables. Weekly hours of work is measured as the usual number of hours worked per week and
the weekly earnings (registro) is the log of the weekly earnings.
***pag < 0.01; **p < 0.05. the Other Speciﬁcations discussion in section 6. English Catholic school boards serve roughly 28 percent of students in Ontario (Ontario Ministry of Education 2020). As noted in section 3, for a child to attend a Catholic primary school, generally one or both parents must be Catholic, but school boards can grant exceptions. Unfortunately, our data do not include any information regarding religion, so we do not know whether a particular child would be eligible to attend a Catholic primary school. We can also run models that include an indicator variable for the year in which the ﬁrst school (ei- ther English Catholic or English Public) assigned to the mother implemented full-day kindergarten. This model measures the ITT of being treated to full-day kindergarten in any English school. Finally, we also use a measure of the share of enrollment of the two schools associated with the mother that is being treated with full-day kindergarten. For 546 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / f / e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d f / . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang Table 3. Difference-in-Differences Estimates of the Impact of Full-Day Kindergarten (FDK) on Maternal Labor Market Outcomes Labor Force Participation Employed Full-time Hours Worked Log (earnings) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Absent (6) Panel A: No Control Variables −0.006 (0.033) −0.021 (0.034) 0.046 (0.031) 1.726* (0.892) −0.045 (0.070) −0.057** (0.027) Panel B: With Individual-Level Controls −0.006 (0.034) 0.048 (0.032) 1.908** (0.883) −0.033 (0.066) −0.058** (0.028) Panel C: With Individual and School/Community-Level Controls −0.01 (0.034) 0.048 (0.031) 1.839** (0.877) −0.045 (0.063) −0.057** (0.028) 0.007 (0.033) 0.006 (0.033) Panel D: School Specific Linear Time Trends 0.003 −(0.040) −0.015 −(0.040) 0.06 −(0.038) 2.617*** −(0.808) 0.015 −(0.057) −0.068 −(0.042) FDK FDK FDK FDK Number of observations 22,500 22,500 18,900 16,200 14,000 12,400 Notes: Standard errors in parentheses clustered at the school level. FDK is an indicator variable equal to one if the school where the household is assigned to offers full-day kindergarten in a particular year. Each regression includes a constant, school year fixed effects, school fixed effects, as well as individual, school, and neighborhood control variables. All models use the appropriate sampling weights provided by Statistics Canada. The number of observations is rounded to the nearest 100 according to vetting requirements of the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre. Labor force participation, employed, full-time employment, and absent from work are all indicator variables. Weekly hours of work is measured as the usual number of hours worked per week and the weekly earnings (log) is the log of the weekly earnings. ***p < 0.01; **p < 0.05; *p < 0.1. instance, suppose the English Catholic school was treated in 2011 and had 50 kinder- garten students and the English Public school was treated in 2013 and had 150 students. The FDK variable would equal 0 until 2011, in 2011 and 2012 it would equal 0.25, and in 2013 and beyond it would equal 1. 6 . R E S U LT S Difference-in-Differences Table 3 presents the results of estimating equation 1 for the sample of mothers aged 18– 55 years in Ontario with their youngest child aged 4 years,29 using six diﬀerent outcome variables: labor force participation, employment, full-time employment, weekly hours of work, log of weekly earnings, and absenteeism. In panel A, the models only include school year and school ﬁxed eﬀects along with the indicator variable, FDK. We ﬁnd a marginally signiﬁcant positive eﬀect on hours worked and a statistically signiﬁcant negative eﬀect on being absent. Our results conﬁrm that reducing absenteeism is a way in which access to full-day kindergarten may help mothers participate in the workforce. We expand our model to include maternal-level individual characteristics and ﬁnd similar results in panel B as we do in panel A, but the coeﬃcient in column 4 for weekly hours worked is now statistically signiﬁcant at the 5 percent level. Next, we include all the control variables, including school and community level controls in the model in 29. As noted above, due to data limitations we only use mothers with children who are 4 years old. This will include a mixture of students in junior and senior kindergarten. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / f / e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d . / f f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 547 Full-Day Kindergarten Effects panel C, and ﬁnd the positive eﬀect on hours worked remains stable at 1.84 additional hours a week, which translates into a 5.5 percent increase in weekly hours. We continue to estimate a negative eﬀect on absenteeism (a roughly 30 percent decline). Because we ﬁnd no statistically signiﬁcant increase in weekly earnings, it may be the case that the positive increase in hours is simply reﬂecting a decrease in absenteeism and not additional hours associated with additional income. We ﬁnd that our results are robust to the inclusion of observable characteristics that may be associated with selection into treatment results, which provides evidence that selection into treatment is not driving the results. Previous research on child care subsidies or the provision of new programs has generally found statistically signiﬁcant positive eﬀects on labor force participation but with considerable heterogeneity. However, studies using more recent data, or data from countries other than the United States, have reported smaller elasticities than those us- ing early data from the United States (Morrissey 2017). Given the policy context of our quasi-experiment—a province with high maternal labor force attachment overall (Cat- tan 2016)—it may not be surprising that we ﬁnd smaller and fewer signiﬁcant eﬀects on labor force outcomes than earlier studies based in the United States. However, our estimated point estimates are very consistent to the ﬁndings regarding French-speaking mothers in Ontario and Quebec (Baker, Gruber, and Milligan 2008; Haeck, Lefebvre, and Merrigan 2015; Dhuey, Eid, and Neill 2020). We are not aware of any other stud- ies measuring the eﬀects of full-day kindergarten on material absenteeism from work. However, research has shown that increasing child care assistance decreases absen- teeism (Gullekson et al. 2014), and the presence of young children is related to families having more absenteeism. Women also lose more days of work than men for personal or family reasons (Statistics Canada 2011b). Robustness Checks The key identifying assumption in our diﬀerence-in-diﬀerences model is that moth- ers assigned to the treatment schools would, in the absence of the treatment, have la- bor market trends similar to those of mothers assigned to the control schools. Our sample includes many schools and years, which, in the absence of a treatment eﬀect, allows us to relax the common trends assumption by introducing a degree of nonpar- allel evolution in outcomes between schools. Following Angrist and Pischke (2014), we include school-speciﬁc linear time trends in table 3, panel D. This provides an impor- tant check on causal interpretations when using a diﬀerence-in-diﬀerences model with multi-period data. Using this model, we continue to ﬁnd a positive statistically signiﬁ- cant eﬀect on hours worked but the signiﬁcance of the result for absenteeism decreases despite having a similar magnitude as in panels A through C. Other robustness checks, including using an event study approach and triple diﬀer- ence models, are described in detail in the online appendix. The results of these models are consistent with the overall ﬁndings. Other Specifications As noted in section 5, our preferred speciﬁcation is to use the treatment of full-day kindergarten in English Public school boards to estimate the ITT eﬀects because most 548 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / / f e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d . / f f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang Table 4. Difference-in-Differences Estimates of the Impact of Full-Day Kindergarten (FDK) on Maternal Labor Market Outcomes—–Different ITT Measures Labor Force Participation Employed Full-time Hours Worked Log (earnings) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Absent (6) Panel A: Catholic FDK 0.011 (0.033) 0.012 (0.037) −0.002 (0.035) Number of observations 22,500 22,500 18,900 0.883 (0.964) 16,200 0.017 (0.065) −0.099*** (0.029) 14,000 12,400 Panel B: First School (Either Public or Catholic) FDK 0.022 (0.035) 0.014 (0.036) −0.003 (0.038) Number of observations 22,500 22,500 18,900 FDK −0.020 (0.045) −0.030 (0.045) 0.027 (0.041) Panel C: Share of Enrollment 1.021 (1.030) 16,200 1.964* (1.115) −0.025 (0.063) −0.074** (0.032) 14,000 12,400 −0.026 (0.073) −0.109** (0.043) Number of observations 22,500 22,500 18,900 16,200 14,000 12,400 Notes: Standard errors in parentheses clustered at the school level. FDK is an indicator variable equal to one if the school where the household is assigned to offers full-day kindergarten in a particular year. In panel A, FDK includes only Catholic schools. In panel B, the FDK measures use the first school in the mother’s catchment area to offer full-day kindergarten. In panel C, the FDK measures use the share of enrollment for each school from each school board type. Each regression includes a constant, school year fixed effects, school fixed effects, as well as individual, school, and neighborhood control variables. All models use the appropriate sampling weights provided by Statistics Canada. The number of observations is rounded to the nearest 100 according to vetting requirements of the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre. Labor force participation, employed, full-time employment, and absent from work are all indicator variables. Weekly hours of work is measured as the usual number of hours worked per week and the weekly earnings (log) is the log of the weekly earnings. ***p < 0.01; **p < 0.05; *p < 0.1. students in Ontario attend these schools. However, English Catholic school boards also serve approximately 28 percent of students in Ontario. Therefore, we can run a speciﬁ- cation to estimate the ITT of access to full-day kindergarten in English Catholic school boards. Panel A in table 4 displays the coeﬃcient for the indicator variable that equals 1 if the English Catholic school to which the household is assigned oﬀers full-day kinder- garten in that school year. The signiﬁcance and the magnitude of the coeﬃcient on hours worked is smaller than for English Public school treatment (table 3, column 4) but the coeﬃcient on absenteeism continues to be negative and signiﬁcant. Panel B presents the results of a model that includes an indicator variable that equals 1 as soon as the ﬁrst school (either English Public or English Catholic) associated with a par- ticular postal code oﬀers full-day kindergarten. This measures the eﬀect of access to full-day kindergarten regardless of school board. The results are similar to the results shown in panel A for the ITT eﬀect of access to full-day kindergarten in English Catholic boards. Finally, panel C presents the results of a model that captures the treatment in- tensity of the availability of full-day kindergarten in both English Public and English Catholic school boards. Here, we create an intensity measure based on the share of en- rollment of the two schools that are being treated with full-day kindergarten and show how this is associated with the mother. The point estimate on the intensity variable for hours worked is similar in magnitude to the point estimate of our preferred model, and a negative eﬀect on absenteeism is still present regardless of the speciﬁcation. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . f / / e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d f / . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 549 Full-Day Kindergarten Effects Summarizing all the speciﬁcations, we consistently ﬁnd that access to full-day kinder- garten increases weekly hours worked and decreases absenteeism. Heterogeneity We next explore whether having access to full-day English Public kindergarten aﬀects mothers diﬀerently based on their observable characteristics. In table 5, we estimate het- erogeneous eﬀects two separate ways. For each outcome variable of interest, we run two diﬀerent models. First, we subsample on the following observable characteristics of the mother: (1) being a single mother (Single); (2) having been born outside Canada (Immi- grant); (3) living in an urban area (Urban); (4) having only one child (One child); and (5) having a high school or lower education level (H.S. education). We run our diﬀerence- in-diﬀerences model from equation 1 and report only the coeﬃcient on FDK. Then, we also run models in which we interact the variable of interest (FDK) with the observable characteristic indicator variables. In these models we report the coeﬃcient for FDK, the coeﬃcient for the interaction, and the coeﬃcient for the observable characteristic indicator variables along with the F-statistic. Panel A presents the results focusing on the eﬀect of the availability of full-day kindergarten on urban mothers. Consistent with the previous results in table 3, we ﬁnd no evidence of an eﬀect on participating in the labor force and being employed. Column 6 presents some marginally signiﬁcant evidence that urban mothers are more likely to work full time given the availability of full-day kindergarten. However, similar to table 3, we ﬁnd strong evidence in columns 7 and 8 that urban mothers work, on average, about two hours more per week. The coeﬃcient for FDK is the eﬀect on rural mothers—it is not signiﬁcant and close to zero. Interestingly, the interaction term be- tween FDK and urban is not statistically signiﬁcant but suggests that most of the weight of the average eﬀect of the policy is from urban mothers. We ﬁnd similarly consistent evidence for being absent from work. Urban mothers are less likely to be absent from work and among rural mothers we see no statistically signiﬁcant relationship between the availability of full-day kindergarten and being absent from work. Panel B (mothers having only one child) and panel C (mothers with a high school or lower education level) both reveal similar patterns in results for working full time, hours worked, and absenteeism. Panel D (mother’s marital status) reveals patterns similar to those in panels A through C but with slightly more imprecise coeﬃcients. Panel E presents diﬀerences between immigrant and nonimmigrant mothers; the results are not consistent across the two diﬀerent speciﬁcations. We ﬁnd a statistically signiﬁcant relationship between being an immigrant and working full time, weekly hours, and absenteeism in the sub-model speciﬁcations (columns 5, 7, and 11). However, when moving to an interaction model, we ﬁnd the opposite. Here, we ﬁnd that the rollout of full-day kindergarten has statistically signiﬁcant eﬀects on working full time, weekly hours, and absenteeism among nonimmigrants. This diﬀerence in results from the two models may be due to a variety of reasons. For example, the interaction model is based on the assumption that the residual variance is homoscedastic, which may not be true in this case. Also, the interaction model does not include the full complement of interactions due to sample size constraints. To explore this issue in more depth, we run models that include all the interactions; the regression coeﬃcients for FDK and FDK interactions are presented in table A.4 in 550 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . f / / e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d f / . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang n o i t c a r e t n I ) 2 1 ( 4 1 0 0 . ) 7 6 0 0 ( . ) 7 6 0 0 ( . 0 8 0 0 − . ) 0 2 0 0 ( . 0 1 0 0 − . * * 9 9 4 . ) 2 3 0 0 ( . 8 4 0 0 − . ) 7 3 0 0 ( . 5 2 0 0 − . ) 6 2 0 0 ( . 6 3 0 0 − . * * 9 1 4 . * 1 5 0 0 − . ) 0 3 0 0 ( . ) 2 4 0 0 ( . 7 3 0 0 − . 3 5 0 0 . ) 6 3 0 0 ( . * * 6 5 4 . - b u S e l p m a s ) 1 1 ( * * 9 6 0 0 − . ) 1 3 0 0 ( . * * 3 0 1 0 − . ) 8 4 0 0 ( . * * 6 7 1 0 − . ) 0 8 0 0 ( . n o i t c a r e t n I ) 0 1 ( ) 3 0 1 0 ( . 9 7 0 0 − . 8 3 0 0 . ) 3 0 1 0 ( . * * * 4 2 2 0 − . ) 8 4 0 0 ( . 9 3 0 . ) 9 6 0 0 ( . 4 4 0 0 − . ) 9 7 0 0 ( . 1 0 0 0 − . ) 4 5 0 0 ( . 3 3 0 0 − . 3 3 0 . ) 7 6 0 0 ( . 7 6 0 0 − . 0 4 1 0 . ) 6 9 0 0 ( . * * * 9 9 2 0 − . ) 5 6 0 0 ( . 0 6 0 . - b u S e l p m a s ) 9 ( ) 8 6 0 0 ( . 1 4 0 0 − . 1 1 0 0 . ) 1 2 1 0 ( . ) 1 1 1 0 ( . 2 0 0 . n o i t c a r e t n I ) 8 ( ) 1 3 7 1 ( . 4 3 3 0 − . 6 7 4 2 . ) 0 9 7 1 ( . ) 8 6 7 0 ( . 6 4 4 0 − . * * 3 4 5 . 0 1 4 1 . ) 1 9 9 0 ( . 5 7 2 1 . ) 5 7 2 1 ( . 8 4 5 0 . ) 5 4 8 0 ( . * * 1 2 5 . 7 3 4 1 . ) 6 7 8 0 ( . 0 5 4 2 . ) 6 7 5 1 ( . ) 7 3 3 1 ( . 6 4 1 2 − . * * 4 3 5 . - b u S e l p m a s ) 7 ( * * 5 6 9 1 . ) 4 5 9 0 ( . * * * 5 3 8 4 . ) 7 5 5 1 ( . n o i t c a r e t n I ) 6 ( n a b r U : A l e n a P ) 6 6 0 0 ( . 5 0 0 0 − . 1 6 0 0 . ) 6 6 0 0 ( . 0 1 0 0 . ) 7 2 0 0 ( . * 1 0 3 . d l i h C e n O : B l e n a P 5 3 0 0 . ) 2 3 0 0 ( . 2 4 0 0 . ) 2 4 0 0 ( . 8 2 0 0 . ) 2 3 0 0 ( . * 1 0 3 . - b u S e l p m a s ) 5 ( 1 4 0 0 . ) 3 3 0 0 ( . * * 4 3 1 0 . ) 3 5 0 0 ( . n o i t a c u d E ) . S H ( . l o o h c S h g i H : C l e n a P * * 9 5 8 3 . ) 9 3 7 1 ( . 9 3 0 0 . ) 0 3 0 0 ( . 6 4 0 0 . ) 1 6 0 0 ( . ) 0 6 0 0 ( . 0 3 0 0 − . 2 7 1 . 4 7 0 0 . ) 7 6 0 0 ( . n o i t c a r e t n I ) 4 ( ) 8 5 0 0 ( . 3 0 0 0 − . ) 8 5 0 0 ( . 7 0 0 0 − . * * * 5 3 1 0 − . ) 8 2 0 0 ( . 9 0 0 . ) 7 3 0 0 ( . 2 1 0 0 − . 7 0 0 0 . ) 8 4 0 0 ( . * * 3 7 0 0 . ) 3 3 0 0 ( . 1 0 0 . 0 0 0 0 . ) 5 3 0 0 ( . ) 3 5 0 0 ( . 1 4 0 0 − . * * * 3 3 1 0 − . ) 8 3 0 0 ( . 5 5 0 . - b u S e l p m a s ) 3 ( ) 7 3 0 0 ( . 6 0 0 0 − . 0 4 0 0 . ) 6 5 0 0 ( . ) 4 6 0 0 ( . 2 7 0 0 − . n o i t c a r e t n I ) 2 ( ) 7 5 0 0 ( . 4 1 0 0 − . 2 2 0 0 . ) 7 5 0 0 ( . * * * 3 0 1 0 − . ) 6 2 0 0 ( . 6 0 0 . 3 0 0 0 . ) 7 3 0 0 ( . 9 0 0 0 . ) 3 4 0 0 ( . * * * 9 7 0 0 . ) 0 3 0 0 ( . 8 0 0 . 0 1 0 0 . ) 4 3 0 0 ( . ) 0 5 0 0 ( . 4 1 0 0 − . * * * 7 4 1 0 − . ) 6 3 0 0 ( . 1 0 0 . - b u S e l p m a s ) 1 ( 2 1 0 0 . ) 6 3 0 0 ( . 0 = K D F + n a b r U * K D F : c i t s i t a t S F n a b r U * K D F n a b r U K D F 9 0 0 0 . ) 2 5 0 0 ( . K D F d l i h C e n O * K D F 0 = K D F + d l i h C e n O * K D F d l i h C e n O : c i t s i t a t S F 7 2 0 0 . ) 8 6 0 0 ( . K D F n o i t a c u d E . . S H * K D F 0 = K D F + : c i t s i t a t S F . . S H * K D F n o i t a c u d E . . S H t n e s b A i ) s g n n r a e ( g o L d e k r o W s r u o H e m i t - l l u F d e y o p m E l n o i t a p i c i t r a P e c r o F r o b a L s t c e f f E s u o e n e g o r e t e H h t i w s e m o c t u O t e k r a M r o b a L l a n r e t a M n o ) K D F ( n e t r a g r e d n K i y a D - l l u F f o t c a p m I e h t f o s e t a m i t s E s e c n e r e f f i D - n i - e c n e r e f f i D . 5 e l b a T l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / / f e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d f / . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 551 Full-Day Kindergarten Effects n o i t c a r e t n I ) 2 1 ( - b u S e l p m a s ) 1 1 ( n o i t c a r e t n I ) 0 1 ( * 5 5 0 0 − . ) 8 2 0 0 ( . ) 9 6 0 0 ( . 7 3 0 0 − . ) 9 4 0 0 ( . 2 1 0 0 − . 2 6 1 . * 1 6 0 0 − . ) 1 3 0 0 ( . 1 1 0 0 . ) 9 3 0 0 ( . ) 3 2 0 0 ( . 5 1 0 0 − . 7 6 1 . * * 1 2 3 0 − . ) 4 5 1 0 ( . * * 7 1 1 0 − . ) 8 5 0 0 ( . ) 4 6 0 0 ( . 1 5 0 0 − . 5 8 0 0 . ) 0 4 1 0 ( . ) 6 9 0 0 ( . 6 0 0 0 − . 6 0 0 . ) 6 6 0 0 ( . 5 3 0 0 − . ) 2 0 1 0 ( . 5 3 0 0 − . * * * 0 1 2 0 − . ) 6 6 0 0 ( . 7 4 0 . - b u S e l p m a s ) 9 ( 0 3 1 0 . ) 6 2 1 0 ( . 0 5 0 0 . ) 9 1 1 0 ( . n o i t c a r e t n I ) 8 ( * 3 7 7 1 . ) 9 0 9 0 ( . 0 7 9 0 . ) 4 1 8 1 ( . 0 2 7 0 . ) 0 3 2 1 ( . 5 4 2 . * * 5 7 2 2 . ) 1 2 9 0 ( . ) 8 6 0 1 ( . 0 0 5 1 − . 4 4 1 0 . ) 7 4 9 0 ( . 2 4 0 . - b u S e l p m a s ) 7 ( * 4 2 1 3 . ) 3 6 6 1 ( . * * 6 6 2 3 . ) 7 0 3 1 ( . n o i t c a r e t n I ) 6 ( e l g n S i : D l e n a P 6 4 0 0 . ) 1 3 0 0 ( . 4 4 0 0 . ) 8 6 0 0 ( . ) 9 4 0 0 ( . 6 5 0 0 − . 3 5 1 . t n a r g i m m I : E l e n a P * * 5 7 0 0 . ) 5 3 0 0 ( . * * 8 7 0 0 − . ) 4 3 0 0 ( . 0 4 0 0 . ) 3 3 0 0 ( . 1 0 0 . - b u S e l p m a s ) 5 ( * * 1 5 1 0 . ) 8 6 0 0 ( . * * 3 8 0 0 . ) 1 4 0 0 ( . n o i t c a r e t n I ) 4 ( ) 5 3 0 0 ( . 5 0 0 0 − . ) 7 6 0 0 ( . 0 6 0 0 − . ) 0 5 0 0 ( . 1 6 0 0 − . 2 9 0 . 0 1 0 0 . ) 3 3 0 0 ( . ) 6 4 0 0 ( . 2 5 0 0 − . * * * 5 1 1 0 − . ) 2 3 0 0 ( . 2 7 0 . - b u S e l p m a s ) 3 ( ) 5 0 1 0 ( . 5 2 0 0 − . ) 9 6 0 0 ( . 6 8 0 0 − . n o i t c a r e t n I ) 2 ( 1 1 0 0 . ) 4 3 0 0 ( . ) 7 5 0 0 ( . 7 5 0 0 − . ) 4 4 0 0 ( . 2 1 0 0 − . 9 5 0 . 7 1 0 0 . ) 0 3 0 0 ( . ) 7 4 0 0 ( . 9 2 0 0 − . * * * 2 9 0 0 − . ) 0 3 0 0 ( . 5 0 0 . - b u S e l p m a s ) 1 ( 8 8 0 0 . ) 5 1 1 0 ( . ) 3 7 0 0 ( . 5 8 0 0 − . t n e s b A i ) s g n n r a e ( g o L d e k r o W s r u o H e m i t - l l u F d e y o p m E l n o i t a p i c i t r a P e c r o F r o b a L . d e u n i t n o C . 5 e l b a T K D F 552 l i e g n S * K D F l e g n S i 0 = K D F + e g n S * K D F i l : c i t s i t a t S F 0 = K D F + t n a r g m m i I K D F * K D F t n a r g m m i I : c i t s i t a t S F t n a r g m m i I * K D F 0 0 4 2 1 , 0 0 4 2 1 , 0 0 0 4 1 , 0 0 0 4 1 , 0 0 2 6 1 , 0 0 2 6 1 , 0 0 9 8 1 , 0 0 9 8 1 , 0 0 5 2 2 , 0 0 5 2 2 , 0 0 5 2 2 , 0 0 5 2 2 , s n o i t a v r e s b o f o r e b m u N a s e d u c n l i n o i s s e r g e r h c a E . r a e y l r a u c i t r a p a n i n e t r a g r e d n k i y a d - l l u f s r e f f o d e n o z s i l d o h e s u o h e h t e r e h w l o o h c s e h t f i e n o o t l a u q e l e b a i r a v r o t a c d n i i n a s i K D F . l e v e l l o o h c s e h t t a d e r e t s u c l s e s e h t n e r a p n i s r o r r e d r a d n a t S : s e t o N s n o i t a v r e s b o f o r e b m u n e h T . a d a n a C s c i t s i t a t S y b d e d i v o r p s t h g e w g n i i l p m a s e t a i r p o r p p a e h t e s u s l e d o m l l A l . s e b a i r a v l i o r t n o c d o o h r o b h g e n d n a , l o o h c s , l a u d i v i d n i s a l l e w s a , s t c e f f e d e x fi l o o h c s , s t c e f f e d e x fi r a e y l o o h c s , t n a t s n o c y l k e e W l . s e b a i r a v r o t a c d n i i l l a e r a k r o w m o r f t n e s b a d n a , t n e m y o p m e l e m i t - l l u f l , d e y o p m e , n o i t a p c i t r a p i e c r o f r o b a L . e r t n e C a t a D h c r a e s e R a d a n a C s c i t s i t a t S e h t f o s t n e m e r i u q e r g n i t t e v o t i g n d r o c c a 0 0 1 t s e r a e n e h t o t d e d n u o r s i l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . f / / e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d / f . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 . . 1 0 < p * ; . 5 0 0 < p * * ; . 1 0 0 < p * * * . l o o h c s i h g h = . . S H i . s g n n r a e y l k e e w e h t f o g o l e h t s i ) g o l ( i s g n n r a e y l k e e w e h t d n a k e e w r e p d e k r o w s r u o h f o r e b m u n l a u s u e h t s a d e r u s a e m s i k r o w f o s r u o h Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang the online appendix. The only statistically signiﬁcant interaction eﬀect is for mothers with a high school education or lower. Because interpretation of this table is diﬃcult due to the quantity of interactions eﬀects, we include the marginal eﬀects for diﬀer- ent observable characteristics. We ﬁnd a positive and statistically signiﬁcant eﬀect of access to full-day kindergarten on both full-time work and hours worked among non- immigrant mothers. We also ﬁnd a statistically signiﬁcant eﬀect among mothers who live in an urban area, with 2.04 additional hours worked and less chance of being ab- sent from work. We ﬁnd similar results for mothers with one child and mothers with only a high school education or lower. There are a few possible reasons why these eﬀects are concentrated within these groups of mothers. It is possible that in Ontario, mothers in urban areas are more able to change the number of hours worked weekly than mothers in nonurban areas because there are diﬀerent patterns in female employment in rural versus urban environments, in addition to fewer child care facilities (Phimister, Vera-Toscano, and Weersink 2001). It could also be that child care expenses are generally more expensive in urban ver- sus rural areas if material labor outcomes are driven by the lack of aﬀordable child care. It is possible that child care subsidies, in the form of full-day kindergarten, in- crease a mother’s eﬀective wage rate more among those with only a high school ed- ucation or lower, and therefore the subsidization aﬀects their labor market outcomes more. In terms of other factors, it could be that having only one child signals a stronger connection to the labor force, so even a small child care subsidy (or a slightly bigger one, such as full-day kindergarten) would be enough to induce mothers to change their labor force participation. It could also be that because full-day kindergarten is only for 6.5 hours a day, a mother working full time will need before- and after-school care. This is most likely to be ﬁnancially and/or logistically viable for mothers with one child. Overall, we see an eﬀect for mothers whose children have access to full-day kinder- garten in English Public school boards on the intensive margin in terms of increased hours and decreased absence from work. These eﬀects are found primarily for nonim- migrant mothers who have a low education level, only one child, and live in an urban area. Our results are consistent with much of the literature reporting stronger mater- nal labor market eﬀects for single and low-income mothers (Cascio 2009; Fitzpatrick 2010; Havnes and Mogstad 2011; Dhuey, Eid, and Neill 2020). 7 . C O N C L U S I O N The kindergarten reform in Ontario provides all families with 4- and 5-year-olds ac- cess to 6.5 hours of formal early primary education each weekday, an increase from the previous 2.5 hours. Using a robust research strategy, we ﬁnd no response in the extensive margin of labor force supply of mothers who were intended for treatment, but do ﬁnd an eﬀect at the intensive margin of increased number of hours worked and decreased absenteeism. We ﬁnd that access to full-day kindergarten increases hours worked and decreases absenteeism among mothers. This eﬀect is concentrated in spe- ciﬁc subgroups: nonimmigrant, urban, low-education, one-child mothers. The hetero- geneous response we observe is consistent with constraints over many dimensions: l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . f / / e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d / . f f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 553 Full-Day Kindergarten Effects monetary, time, and possibly the availability of space or price in early childhood educa- tion centers. Canada has a relatively high maternal labor force participation rate (in 2014, Canada was the eighth highest of forty OECD countries; OECD 2019a). However, Ontario does not have particularly high levels of subsidization for child care services (OECD 2019b). These contextual factors serve as a moderator of the policy eﬀects of early care subsi- dization. Indeed, the results of this study support the idea that an increased subsidy increases some maternal labor market outcomes by making early child care more af- fordable. When applying these results in another context, it will be important to con- sider the economic and contextual factors. For example, larger eﬀects may be found in a similar policy experiment in areas that have lower labor force participation or high child care costs. Similarly, smaller eﬀects may be found in areas with higher labor force participation and/or lower child care costs. A comprehensive analysis of the rollout of full-day kindergarten would include the beneﬁts and costs for children, families, child care, and the educational system. This kind of comprehensive cost–beneﬁt analysis is beyond the scope of this paper but will be necessary to analyze the full eﬀects of the policy change. Additionally, because the evidence regarding expansion of subsidized programming in early years is mixed, it will be important to explore this issue in other locales. Speciﬁcally, if increasing maternal labor supply is the desired policy outcome, it will be necessary to consider expanding early education programs to predict the possible magnitudes of eﬀect on maternal labor supply and possibly consider more targeted subsidies as a way to increase maternal labor supply. REFERENCES Angrist, Joshua D., and Jörn-Steﬀen Pischke. 2014. Mastering metrics: The path from cause to eﬀect. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Baker, Michael, Jonathan Gruber, and Kevin Milligan. 2008. Universal child care, maternal labor supply, and family well-being. Journal of Political Economy 116(4): 709–745. http://dx.doi.org/10. 1086/591908 Brown, Cynthia G., Donna Cooper, Juliana Herman, Melissa Lazarín, Michael Linden, Sasha Post, and Neera Tanden. 2013. Investing in our children: A plan to expand access to preschool and child care. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress. Cannon, Jill S., Alison Jacknowitz, and Gary Painter. 2006. Is full better than half? Examining the longitudinal eﬀects of full-day kindergarten attendance. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 25(2): 299–321. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pam.20174 Card, David, Martin D. Dooley, and A. Abigail Payne. 2010. School competition and eﬃciency with publicly funded Catholic schools. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2(4): 150– 176. Cascio, Elizabeth U. 2009. Maternal labor supply and the introduction of kindergartens into American public schools. Journal of Human Resources 44(1): 140–170. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/ jhr.2009.0034 Cascio, Elizabeth U. 2015. The promises and pitfalls of universal early education. IZA World of Labor 2015:116. 554 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . f / / e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d f . / f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang Cascio, Elizabeth U., Steven Haider, and Helena Skyt Nielsen. 2015. The eﬀectiveness of policies that promote labor force participation of women with children: A collection of national studies. Labour Economics 36:64–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2015.08.002 Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario. 2017. Administrative procedure: School oper- ations - admission of students. Available https://www.cdsbeo.on.ca/policies/B8-1_Admission_of _ Students.pdf . Accessed 3 June 2021. Cattan, Sarah. 2016. Can universal preschool increase the labor supply of mothers? IZA World of Labor 2016:312. DeCicca, Philip. 2007. Does full-day kindergarten matter? Evidence from the ﬁrst two years of schooling. Economics of Education Review 26(1): 67–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev. 2005.04.003 Dhuey, Elizabeth, Jean Eid, and Christine Neill. 2020. Parental employment eﬀects of switching from half-day to full-day kindergarten: Evidence from Ontario’s French schools. Canadian Public Policy 46(1): 145–174. Fitzpatrick, Maria Donovan. 2010. Preschoolers enrolled and mothers at work? The eﬀects of universal prekindergarten. Journal of Labor Economics 28(1): 51–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/ 648666 Fitzpatrick, Maria Donovan. 2012. Revising our thinking about the relationship between maternal labor supply and preschool. Journal of Human Resources 47(3): 583–612. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/ jhr.2012.0026 Gelbach, Jonah B. 2002. Public schooling for young children and maternal labor supply. Ameri- can Economic Review 92(1): 307–322. http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/000282802760015748 Gibbs, Chloe R. 2014. A matter of time? Impact of statewide full-day kindergarten expansions on later academic skills and maternal employment. Available https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/ ﬁles/OASP/legacy/ﬁles/2013-2014_DOL_Scholars_Paper_Series_Gibbs_Chapter.pdf . Accessed 16 June 2021. Government of Ontario. 2010. Poverty reduction strategy (2010 annual report). Available https:// docs.ontario.ca/documents/3361/2010-annual-report.pdf . Accessed 3 June 2021. Gullekson, Nicole L., Rodger Griﬀeth, Jeﬀrey B. Vancouver, Christine T. Kovner, and Debra Co- hen. 2014. Vouching for childcare assistance with two quasi-experimental studies. Journal of Man- agerial Psychology 29(8): 994–1008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JMP-06-2012-0182 Haeck, Catherine, Pierre Lefebvre, and Philip Merrigan. 2015. Canadian evidence on ten years of universal preschool policies: The good and the bad. Labour Economics 36:137–157. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.labeco.2015.05.002 Hammer, Kate. 2010. Full-day kindergarten popularity outstrips plans to pay for it. The Globe and Mail, 6 December. Havnes, Tarjei, and Magne Mogstad. 2011. Money for nothing? Universal child care and maternal employment. Journal of Public Economics 95(11–12): 1455–1465. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco. 2011.05.016 Heckman, James J. 2006. Skill vantaged children. Science 312(5782): PubMed: 16809525 formation and the economics of investing in disad- 1900–1902. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1128898, l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / / f e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d f / . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 555 Full-Day Kindergarten Effects Hoynes, Hilary Williamson, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. 2010. Work incentives and the Food Stamp Program. NBER Working Paper No. 16198. Hoynes, Hilary Williamson, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. 2012. Work incentives and the Food Stamp Program. Journal of Public Economics 96(1–2): 151–162. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. jpubeco.2011.08.006 McDiarmid, Jessica. 2013. Should you put oﬀ kindergarten for your child? The Toronto Star, 17 June. Morrissey, Taryn W. 2017. Child care and parent labor force participation: a review of the re- search literature. Review of Economics of the Household 15(1): 1–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/ s11150-016-9331-3 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2019a. Labour force partici- pation rate (Indicator). Paris, France: OECD Publishing. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2019b. Net childcare costs (Indicator). Paris, France: OECD Publishing. Ontario Ministry of Education. 2014. Ministry of Education update. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: On- tario Ministry of Education. Ontario Ministry of Education. 2019. Before and after school programs, kindergarten – Grade 6: Policies and guidelines for school boards. Available https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/0/docs/ before-after-school-programs-k-gr6-policies-guidelines-en.pdf . Accessed 3 June 2021. Ontario Ministry of Education. 2020. Education facts, 2018–2019. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: On- tario Ministry of Education. Pascal, Charles E. 2009. With our best future in mind: Implementing early learning in Ontario: Report to the premier by the special advisor on early learning. Available https://www.oise.utoronto. ca/atkinson/UserFiles/File/Resources_Topics/With_Our_Best_Future_In_Mind_-_Charles_Pa scal.pdf . Accessed 3 June 2021. Phimister, Euan, Esperanza Vera-Toscano, and Alfons Weersink. 2001. Female employment rates and labour market attachment in rural Canada. Available https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/ 11f0019m/11f0019m2001153-eng.pdf?st=jRYyGu4R. Accessed 16 June 2021. Sall, Sean P. 2014. Maternal labor supply and the availability of public pre-K: Evidence from the introduction of prekindergarten into American public schools. Economic Inquiry 52(1): 17–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12002 Statistics Canada. 2006. 2006 census topic-based tabulation. Statistics Canada Catalogue No. 97-551-XCB2006006. Toronto, Canada: Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada. 2011a. 2011 census of Canada: Topic-based tabulations. Statistics Canada Cata- logue No. 98-311-XCB2011006. Toronto, Canada: Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada. 2011b. Work absence rates 2010. Available https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/ pub/71-211-x/71-211-x2011000-eng.pdf?st=67tVHuke. Accessed 3 June 2021. Statistics Canada. 2015. Table 1-7: Absence rates for full-time employees - by sex, province and region, 2011. Available http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/71-211-x/2012000/t009-eng.htm. Accessed 30 Au- gust 2017. 556 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / / f e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d f . / f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Elizabeth Dhuey, Jessie Lamontagne, and Tingting Zhang Statistics Canada. 2016a. Estimates of population, by age group and sex, Canada, provinces and ter- ritories. CANSIM (database), Table 051-0001. Available https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/ 04e5b2c5-219b-408c-b9ea-4da828ccab81. Accessed 16 June 2021. Statistics Canada. 2016b. Guide to the labour force survey, 2016. Available https://www150.statcan. gc.ca/n1/pub/71-543-g/71-543-g2016001-eng.pdf . Accessed 16 June 2021. Statistics Canada. 2019. Labour force characteristics by province, territory and economic region, an- nual: Table 14-10-0090-01. Available https://doi.org/10.25318/1410009001-eng. Accessed 16 June 2021. Toronto Catholic District School Board. 2017. Kindergarten registration. Toronto, Canada: Toronto Catholic District School Board. van Huizen, Thomas, and Janneke Plantenga. 2018. Do children beneﬁt from universal early childhood education and care? A meta-analysis of evidence from natural experiments. Economics of Education Review 66:206–222. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.08.001 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . f / / e d u e d p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 1 6 4 5 3 3 1 9 6 5 2 5 4 e d p _ a _ 0 0 3 2 1 p d . f / f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 557 JARDÍN DE KINDER DE DÍA COMPLETO: EFFECTS image

Descargar PDF