Head Start and Mothers: Free Childcare or Something More?
Labour Economics (2022)
Head Start is the largest public pre-school program in the US, but it provides many additional services to families. This paper uses a discontinuity in grant writing assistance from the founding of the Head Start program in 1965, to identify impacts on the work and welfare usage of mothers in the short and long-run. Using restricted Decennial Census and administrative AFDC data I find that Head Start increased employment for non-white mothers, while decreasing employment for single mothers. This is accompanied by a suggestive increase in welfare receipt for single mothers which is confirmed by an increase in the share of administrative welfare case-files that are single mother households. When estimating the first long run impacts on mothers, 10 years after a woman’s child was eligible for Head Start, I find large and persistent declines in work for both non-white mothers and single mothers. This is accompanied by an increase in public assistance income and return to school. I argue that this is consistent with the 1960’s era Head Start program’s focus on encouraging quality parenting, parent participation and helping families access all benefits for which they were eligible.
Did California Paid Family Leave Impact Infant Health? , with Gaetano Basso
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (2019)
The effects of paid parental leave policies on infant health have yet to be established. In this paper we investigate these effects by exploiting the introduction of California Paid Family Leave (PFL), the first program in the U.S. that specifically provides working parents with paid time off for bonding with a newborn. We measure health using the full census of infant hospitalizations in California, and a set of control states using a differences-in-differences approach. Our results suggest a decline in infant admissions, which is concentrated among those causes that are potentially affected by closer childcare (and to a lesser extent breastfeeding). Other admissions that are unlikely to be affected by parental leave do not exhibit the same pattern.
Earnings Expectations and Educational Sorting: An Ex-Ante Perspective on Returns to University Education, with N. Angelov, P. Johansson & M. Lindahl
Revise & Resubmit
We estimate means and distributions of ex-ante treatment effects for obtaining university education relative to high school. To achieve this, we conducted a survey which elicited earnings expectations associated with counterfactual educational choices for a sample of high-school students in Stockholm. Students appear to have reasonable level of earnings expectations but deviate significantly in their stated and revealed educational preferences. The students’ returns vary considerably. The average ex-ante returns to university is estimated to be 45%, with higher returns for females, those with high SES backgrounds, high math scores and for those that choose university. However, the return is also positive and sizable for those who do not. For the individuals who choose high school to be indifferent between high school and university they must discount their lifetime earning streams with a discount rate of around 4%-6%. Our results imply that students sort into education based on their comparative advantage. We also find that those that are more likely to choose university do not have higher- than-average expected high school earnings. In combination with an estimated positive, but rather weak, correlation between the expected university and high school earnings of prospective students this result enables us to conclude that expected earnings ability is not unidimensional.
Subjective Expectations, Educational Choice Heterogeneity and Gender: Evidence from a Sample of Swedish High School Students, with N. Angelov, P. Johansson & M. Lindahl
Experimental evidence on the impact of earnings information on college choice, with N. Angelov, P. Johansson & M. Lindahl
Skill Transmission Between Generations and the Heritability of Comparative Advantage (with M. Lindahl)
Through my involvement with the Poverty Center at UC Davis I have authored and co-authored several short briefs intended for a policymakers and a general audience.
The Challenges of Low-wage Work (with Ann Stevens)
Wage Growth and Increased Hours Reduce Poverty
Paid Family Leave, Job Protection and Low Take-up among Low-wage Workers (with Gaetano Basso)