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Ph.d.-forsvar

Sarah Sander defends her PhD thesis at the Department of Economics

Ph.d.-forsvar — Sarah Sander defends her PhD thesis "Investments in Universal Early Childhood Education".

Info

Date & Time:

Place:
University of Copenhagen, Centre for Health and Society, Department of Economics, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen K, building 7, room 7.0.34.

Hosted by:
Department of Economics

Cost:
Free

Candidate
Sarah Sander

Title
Investments in Universal Early Childhood Education“. Det vil være muligt før forsvaret at rekvirere en kopi af afhandlingen ved henvendelse til Informationen (26.0.20), Økonomisk Institut. Kindly note that the defence will start precisely at the announced time.

Time and venue
21 November 2018 at 14:00. University of Copenhagen, Centre for Health and Society, Department of Economics, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen K, building 7, room 7.0.34. Kindly note that the defence will start precisely at the announced time.

Assessment committee

  • Professor Søren Leth-Petersen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark (chairman)
  • Proofessor Emilia del Bono, University of Essex, United Kingdom
  • Associate professor Tarjei Havnes, University of Oslo, Norway

Abstract
This dissertation consists of three self-contained chapters on universal early childhood education. They complement each other by investigating three different perspectives of a large-scale investment in the rollout of universal daycare in Denmark during the late 1960s and 70s.

The first chapter examines how the introduction of universal daycare affects children’s education and earnings at age 35. The results in the first chapter point out that the effects are greatest for children of high-educated mothers, especially their sons benefit from universal daycare. The mechanism is a shift from informal to formal care rather than increased household resources for children of high-educated mothers, and a shift from maternal to formal care for children of low-educated mothers.

The second chapter investigates how daycare affects the intergenerational transmission of schooling using a schooling reform affecting the maternal generation alongside differential access to daycare affecting the offspring generation, and identify the causal chain from maternal schooling, via daycare availability, to child’s schooling. The results indicate that one more year of maternal schooling increases offspring schooling by two months, and that the intergenerational effect is greater for the children who had access to daycare.

The third chapter looks at how the opportunity to enroll children in daycare affects mothers’ career paths over a lifetime. The results show that universal daycare access positively affects mothers’ labor force participation, full-time employment, and long-run earnings.

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