child development

Using US census data and instrumental variable methods, we examine several social and economic indicators that reflect the integration experiences of migrants who arrive in the before the age of 18. We find that age at arrival influences chances of dropping out of high school children who arrive after the age of eight.

Previous research using Canadian administrative data has shown that infants born with low birth weight have poorer human capital outcomes when late teenagers and young adults. This paper adds to this literature by examining the effect of birth weight on cognitive and behavioral outcomes using a nationally representative sample of Canadian children under 13.

Although the impacts of Québec's child care policy have been estimated in earlier papers, we present some new results with more recent data with the NLSCY on child development, with the NLSCY and the Census on labour supply and provide a cost-benefit analysis with the SLID. We find some negative impacts of the policy on child development, the positive impacts found with earlier data are replicated with more recent data but the Census provides some measure of uncertainty regarding the results found with the NLSCY.

Ongoing interest in childcare issues has been stimulated in part by a trend towards the increasing labour force participation of mothers with young children. The empirical literature evaluating the impact of childcare programs on developmental outcomes appears to reach conflicting results. On the one hand, small scale experimental studies find large benefits for disadvantaged children, whereas studies that look at programs which provide universal coverage do not find evidence of significant benefits.