Why are children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) substantially less likely to be enrolled in child care? We study whether barriers in the application process work against lower-SES children — the group known to benefit strongest from child care enrollment. In an RCT in Germany with highly subsidized child care (N = 607), we offer treated families information and personal assistance for applications. We find substantial, equity-enhancing effects of the treatment, closing half of the large SES gap in child care enrollment. Increased enrollment for lower-SES families is likely driven by altered application knowledge and behavior. We discuss scalability of our intervention and derive policy implications for the design of universal child care programs.

This field experiment investigates the causal impact of mothers’ perceptions of gender norms on their employment attitudes and labor-supply expectations. We provide mothers of young children in Germany with information about the prevailing gender norm regarding maternal employment in their city. At baseline, over 70% of mothers incorrectly perceive this gender norm as too conservative – the most pronounced misperception among the various gender norms we examine. Our randomized information treatment improves the accuracy of these perceptions, significantly reducing the share of mothers who perceive gender norms as overly conservative. The treatment also shifts mothers’ own labormarket attitudes in a more liberal direction. Leveraging the fact that we assessed attitudes in a prior survey, we show that specifically the shifted attitude is a strong predictor of mothers’ future labor-market participation. Consistently, treated mothers are more likely to plan an increase in their working hours, particularly those with existing support to facilitate their employment.

Why are children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) substantially less likely to be enrolled in child care? We study whether barriers in the application process work against lower-SES children — the group known to benefit strongest from child care enrollment. In an RCT in Germany with highly subsidized child care (N = 607), we offer treated families information and personal assistance for applications. We find substantial, equity-enhancing effects of the treatment, closing half of the large SES gap in child care enrollment. Increased enrollment for lower-SES families is likely driven by altered application knowledge and behavior. We discuss scalability of our intervention and derive policy implications for the design of universal child care programs.

In den meisten Ländern wirkt sich die Geburt eines Kindes negativ auf den Arbeitsmarkterfolg von Müttern aus, insbesondere bei Müttern mit niedrigerem Schulabschluss. In diesem Beitrag werden die Ergebnisse eines Feldexperiments in Deutschland vorgestellt, in dem Familien bei der Bewerbung für einen Platz in einer Kindertagesstätte (Kita) unterstützt wurden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der verbesserte Zugang zu frühkindlicher Betreuung die Wahrscheinlichkeit erhöht, dass Mütter ohne Abitur in Vollzeit arbeiten, und deren Haushaltseinkommen steigert. Um den Arbeitsmarkterfolg von Müttern zu verbessern, sollte die Politik den Zugang zu frühkindlicher Betreuung erleichtern und die Zahl der Kita-Plätze noch weiter erhöhen.

This study investigates discrimination against women when searching and applying for childcare in a nationwide field experiment. We send emails from fictitious parents to 9,313 childcare centers in Germany inquiring about access to childcare. We randomize whether the email is sent by the child's mother or father. Our results show that women receive shorter and less positive responses than men. The probability of receiving a response does not differ by gender, highlighting the importance of going beyond response rates to detect discrimination. We provide suggestive evidence that regional differences in gender discrimination are related to gender norms.