Abstract
In this paper we estimate the impact of higher early preschool access on offending behavior later in time, exploiting a nationwide public preschool expansion that took place in Spain over the 1990s. This is the first study providing evidence on the relationship between preschool and crime using a large-scale, universal-access program rather than targeted initiatives reserved for disadvantaged children. Our identification strategy relies on the staggered implementation of the Spanish preschool expansion across regions and birth cohorts. We link the education data to a unique administrative crime dataset recording the offenses committed in the region of Catalonia over the period 2009–2014. On average, a 1 percentage point increase in preschool access among the age 0–3 population yields 1.6% fewer crime actions during youth and young adulthood. Larger effects on impulsive-crime categories provide suggestive evidence for non-cognitive-skills improvements being important drivers of our results.
Highlights
Childhood years are recognized by various fields of research as a key stage in life, carrying the power to shape future outcomes all the way through youth and into adulthood
We find a negative impact of early public preschool availability on crime rates in youth and young adulthood: a 1 percentage point increase in preschool access back in the early 1990s yields 1.6% fewer criminal actions in the 2000s
The fact that the expansion was staggered across birth cohorts and Spanish regions provides the key source of variation to our analysis, which is based on a multiplefixed-effects model
Summary
Childhood years are recognized by various fields of research as a key stage in life, carrying the power to shape future outcomes all the way through youth and into adulthood. We observe basic information about the offender, notably his/her birth cohort and region of origin, and detailed information about the offense committed, among which its date, location and type Exploiting this information, in the second part of our analysis we are able to assess the impact that the national preschool expansion program has had on different types of crime separately, which helps us to form a more precise opinion on the potential mechanisms at work behind our main results. We present descriptive statistics (A), analysis on model fit (B), additional tables and figures which are supporting our analysis (C) as well as the information needed to perform benefit-to-cost calculations derived from our estimates (D)
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