Long-Term Effects of Early Childhood Care and Education

This paper critically reviews what we know about the long-term effects of parental leave and early childhood education programs. We find only limited evidence that expansions of parental leave durations improved long-run educational or labor market outcomes of the children whose parents were affected by them, perhaps because benefits are hard to measure or confined to sub-groups, or because leave entitlements were sufficiently long, even before recent extensions, to yield most potential benefits. By contrast, expansions of early education generally yield benefits at school entry, adolescence, and for adults, particularly for disadvantaged children; however the gains may be less pronounced when high quality subsidized child care was available prior to the program expansion or when subsidies increased the use of low quality care.parental leave, early childhood care and education

The Effects of California’s Paid Family Leave Program on Mothers’ Leave-Taking and Subsequent Labor Market Outcomes

This analysis uses March Current Population Survey data from 1999-2010 and a differences-in-differences approach to examine how California’s first in the nation paid family leave (PFL) program affected leave-taking by mothers following childbirth, as well as subsequent labor market outcomes. We obtain robust evidence that the California program more than doubled the overall use of maternity leave, increasing it from around three to six or seven weeks for the typical new mother – with particularly large growth for less advantaged groups. We also provide suggestive evidence that PFL increased the usual weekly work hours of employed mothers of one-to-three year-old children by 6 to 9% and that their wage incomes may have risen by a similar amount.

Does Prekindergarten Improve School Preparation and Performance?

Prekindergarten programs are expanding rapidly, but to date, evidence on their effects is quite limited. Using rich data from Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we estimate the effects of prekindergarten on children's school readiness. We find that prekindergarten increases reading and mathematics skills at school entry, but also increases behavioral problems and reduces self-control. Furthermore, the effects of prekindergarten on skills largely dissipate by the spring of first grade, although the behavioral effects do not. Finally, effects differ depending on children's family background and subsequent schooling, with the largest and most lasting academic gains for disadvantaged children and those attending schools with low levels of academic instruction.

Public Policies and Women's Employment after Childbearing

This paper examines how the public policy environment in the United States affects work by new mothers following childbirth. We examine four types of policies that vary across states and affect the budget constraint in different ways. The policy environment has important effects, particularly for less advantaged mothers. There is a potential conflict between policies aiming to increase maternal employment and those maximizing the choices available to families with young children. However, this tradeoff is not absolute since some choice-increasing policies (generous child care subsidies and state parental leave laws) foster both choice and higher levels of employment.public policies, maternal employment, childbearing

Cognitive and Noncognitive Peer Effects in Early Education

We examine peer effects in early education by estimating value-added models with school fixed effects that control extensively for individual, family, peer, and teacher characteristics to account for the endogeneity of peer group formation. We find statistically significant and robust spillover effects from preschool on math and reading outcomes, but statistically insignificant effects on various behavioral and social outcomes. We also find that peer externalizing problems, which most likely capture classroom disturbance, hinder cognitive outcomes. Our estimates imply that ignoring spillover effects significantly understates the social returns to preschool

Time for Children: Trends in the Employment Patterns of Parents, 1967-2009

Utilizing data from the 1967-2009 years of the March Current Population Surveys, we examine two important resources for children's well-being: time and money. We document trends in parental employment, from the perspective of children, and show what underlies these trends. We find that increases in family work hours mainly reflect movements into jobs by parents who, in prior decades, would have remained at home. This increase in market work has raised incomes for children in the typical two-parent family but not for those in lone-parent households. Time use data from 1975 and 2003-2008 reveal that working parents spend less time engaged in primary childcare than their counterparts without jobs but more than employed peers in previous cohorts. Analysis of 2004 work schedule data suggests that non-daytime work provides an alternative method of coordinating employment schedules for some dual-earner families.parental employment, child care time, work family balance, coordinated work schedules

Parental leave policies and parents' employment and leave-taking

Utilizing data from the June Current Population Survey (CPS) Fertility Supplement merged with data from other months of the CPS, we describe trends in parents' employment and leave-taking after birth of a newborn and analyze the extent to which these behaviors are associated with parental leave policies. The period we examine - 1987 to 2004 - is one in which such policies were expanded at both the state and federal level. We also provide the first comprehensive evidence as to how these expansions are correlated with employment and leave-taking for both mothers and fathers over this period. Our main finding is that leave expansions have increased the amount of time that new mothers and fathers spend on leave, with effects that are small in absolute terms but large relative to the baseline for men and much greater for college-educated women than for their counterparts with less schooling

Dealing with digital: the economic organisation of streamed music

© The Author(s) 2020. The intervention of digital service providers (DSPs) or platforms, such as Spotify Apple Music and Tidal, that supply streamed music has fundamentally altered the operation of copyright management organisations (CMOs) and the way song-writers and recording artists are paid. Platform economics has emerged from the economic analysis of two- and multi-sided markets, offering new insights into the way business is conducted in the digital sphere and is applied here to music streaming services. The business model for music streaming differs from previous arrangements by which the royalty paid to song-writers and performers was a percentage of sales. In the case of streamed music, payment is based on revenues from both subscriptions and ad-based free services. The DSP agrees a rate per stream with the various rights holders that varies according to the deal made with each of the major record labels, with CMOs, with representatives of independent labels and with unsigned artists and song-writers with consequences for artists’ earnings. The article discusses these various strands with a view to understanding royalty payments for streamed music in terms of platform economics, offering some data and information from the Norwegian music industry to give empirical support to the analysis

Has the Price of Motherhood Declined Over Time? A Cross-Cohort Comparison of the Motherhood Wage Penalty

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73089/1/j.1741-3737.2003.00597.x.pd