As part of the Brown Bag Lunch series, the International Economics Department at the Graduate Institute is pleased to invite you to a public talk given by Anna B. Kis, PhD student in Development Economics.

Early Childhood Education and Female Labor Market Participation in Mexico

Abstract: In February 2019, the Mexican government announced a change in the financing of Estancias Infantiles, nurseries for children aged 0-4 targeted to lower-income households that were privately operated with significant government subsidies. The new system cut the program budget in half and restricted subsidies to a small sub-sample of previously eligible parents. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this led to a wave of nursery closures, as the sum given to the parents was either insufficient for enrollment, or was used for other purposes by the household. In this preliminary work, I plan to analyze the effect of this policy change on labor market participation, and working hours of the primary caretakers, mainly mothers of eligible children. Proposed methods include a differences-in-differences analysis, and a regression discontinuity design where the cutting point is defined by household eligibility criteria.