Escaping adversity through preschool attendance in early twentieth century Sweden

This paper studies if attendance to one of the first types of formal childcare establishments in early twentieth century Sweden helped children escape adverse socioeconomic circumstances in the short and long term. It uses individual longitudinal data from a middle-sized Swedish industrial town, linked to individual data on attendance to the local pre-school (for children in ages 2-7), and follows individuals from childhood until early adulthood. Children from the most disadvantaged families dominated among pre-school attenders. To address endogeneity in pre-school attendance, an instrumental variables methodology is applied with distance between the home and pre-school as an instrument. Results show that pre-school attendance increased the income of a child’s family in the immediate term and reduced primary school absence rates in later childhood. In the longer term, pre-school attenders experienced higher occupational attainment. Increased parental labour supply and family income appear as mechanisms. The study contributes to the existing literature on long-term economic effects from childhood circumstances by showing that the first pre-schools, despite providing limited educational elements, still enabled economically disadvantaged families to improve their socioeconomic circumstances.