Preventing Child Maltreatment: Beneficial Side Effects of Public Childcare
利用德国早期托育改革带来的地区差异，研究发现公共托育每增加一个百分点，儿童严重虐待导致离家安置的案例减少约1%，表明公共托育的成本效益可能高于以往认知。
Abstract We investigate the impact of public childcare provision on the incidence of severe child maltreatment. For identification, we exploit a reform that expanded early childcare in Germany, generating large temporal and spatial variation in childcare coverage at the county level. Using high-quality administrative data covering all reported cases of child maltreatment in Germany by county and year, we find that an increase in childcare slots by one percentage point in a county reduced child maltreatment cases leading to out-of-home placement by about 1%. Our results suggest that the provision of universal public childcare may be more cost effective than previously thought.