The Long-Term Socio-Economic Impact of Early Childhood Education Expansion

The provision of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is widely recognized as a crucial lever for enhancing female labor market participation and fostering local economic development. This study investigates the long-run evolution of ECEC services in Emilia-Romagna, one of the largest Italian regions, focusing on new facility openings over more than two decades. Emilia-Romagna represents a particularly informative case study due to its prominent role in childcare provision and the availability of highly granular municipal-level data covering a long-time span. Our analysis aims to identify the causal nexus between the strengthening of the 0–3 educational network and the socio-economic trajectory of the territory. Given that the expansion of services is often not randomly distributed but correlated with pre-existing municipal characteristics, the study employs and combines rigorous counterfactual methods to identify the causal effects of interest. The analysis tests whether the expansion of ECEC services has significantly enhanced female labor supply, thus reducing the “motherhood penalty”, and whether effects differ across peripheral and central municipalities. Preliminary results indicate no statistically significant employment effects following the opening of the first nursery, suggesting that the impact of childcare expansion may depend on local labor market conditions and pre-existing care arrangements.