Childcare and Parenting in the Production of Early Life Skills

We use data from a randomized early childhood education program to estimate the production technology of early life skills. Estimates indicate that, for more disadvantaged children, parental investment is a more effective input for producing skills than childcare. The reverse is true for the more advantaged. The program increases childcare for all children; it increases parental investment for the more disadvantaged. Therefore, our results indicate that programs stimulating parental investment promote mobility across the distribution of early life skills. We thus micro-found recent studies showing that successful early childhood education programs foster parental investment on top of offering high-quality childcare.