Investments in Early Education and Child Outcomes: The Short and the Long Run

In the last few years a growing number of economists and psychologists have focused on the ways parents care for their younger children. In households where both parents work in particular, the care of children has to be at least partially delegated to the care of other members of the family or to formal childcare. Given the importance of early investments in children’s development, an intense debate has focused on the availability and quality of alternative childcare modalities as substitutes for maternal time. n this article we report recent findings from the literature focusing on the impact of parental and non-parental investments on child outcomes, with attention to cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes as well as short-run and long-run effects.