Impacts of Universal Pre-K Availability on Mothers' Labor Force Participation: Evidence from New York City

How does affordable quality early childhood education impact mothers’ work trajectories? A growing literature on this question documents the benefits of public care support in expanding parents’ employment opportunities, particularly for mothers. However, there are gaps in the literature regarding the labor supply effects of free universal prekindergarten (UPK) offered to all age-eligible children without income or employment requirements. This study aims to address some of the gaps by asking the following questions: (1) To what extent does UPK boost mothers’ labor force participation (LFP)? (2) Does UPK for three- and four-year-old children, compared to only for four-year-olds, further improve mothers’ early attachment to the labor market? (3) Does UPK narrow the disparities in LFP across families’ sociodemographic characteristics?

This study exploits NYC’s staggered rollout of the 3-K for All (3K) program between 2017-2021 to investigate how the availability of 3K helped mothers to join and stay in the workforce. In 2017, NYC launched the 3K, universal prekindergarten (UPK) program that provides free full-day care for any 3-year-old child, extending its earlier success of UPK for 4-year-olds. The 3K program was rolled out district by district, forming a comparison group with late 3K rollout districts. This study uses the Early Childhood Poverty Tracker (ECPT) data, a panel study surveying the representative families with young children in NYC since 2017. The longitudinal nature of the data allows applying a difference-in-difference framework with family-level fixed effects to compare the changes in mothers’ LFP trajectories before and after their children reach the age of three between treatment and comparison groups (families living in early versus late 3K rollout districts), controlling for unobserved family characteristics.

Preliminary results indicate that 3K availability immediately led to a significant and substantial increase in mothers’ LFP by nearly 8 p.p.(or 11% of the baseline LFP rate (75%) before children’s age became eligible for 3K), and the impact lasted through the following 1.5 years. A series of subgroup analyses demonstrate heterogeneity: 3K availability improved mothers’ LFP more prominently among families of married couples, families with a high-school education or less, families with an immigrant background, families living near poverty (income between 100% to 200% of the supplemental poverty line), and Black and Hispanic families. Interestingly, mothers in single-parent-headed families and families living in poverty (income below the supplemental poverty line) showed one-year lagged LFP responses to the 3-K availability. The results imply that UPK for 3-year-old children supports mothers to be in the labor force earlier, and this impact persists for at least a year. The heterogeneous benefits of UPK indicate that the policy alleviates financial and care constraints of work for mothers with fewer resources, contributing to more equitable employment opportunities.