The (in)effectiveness of financial incentive on fertility behaviour : Childcare –a safety net for children?

Sammanfattning: Is childcare a safety net for vulnerable children? This paper investigates the role of childcare for the health outcomes of children whose parents are unemployed. Exploiting time variation in childcare access resulting from a reform requiring Swedish municipalities to provide childcare also for children with unemployed parents, we estimate causal effects on health, as measured by register data on hospitalizations. We find that access to childcare reduced hospitalizations for infections among toddlers, especially among boys. Among children in preschool age access to childcare caused a temporary increase in hospitalization for infections the year they got access to childcare.