Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The state of Arizona has traditionally mandated only half time kindergarten in public school districts. However, Arizona school districts started offering full-time kindergarten to age-eligible children in 2004 phasing in till the year 2007 when full-time kindergarten was mandated across all public schools in Arizona for all age-eligible children. Following budget cuts for year 2010, the state once again reduced mandatory kindergarten in public school districts to half-time. This variation offers a rare window of opportunity to examine a period of rapid policy changes introduced in a phased-in approach. The availability of full-time kindergarten in public school provides free childcare to working women with age-eligible children. Using data from American Community Survey (ACS) from year 2000-2017, this paper will use a difference in difference in differences (Triple Difference -DDD) approach to estimate if availability of a publicly funded full-time kindergarten increases labor force participation of women. The triple difference (DDD) approach leverages cross-state, cross-time, and cross-age eligibility variation in the exposure to our treatment which is the utilization of a publicly funded full time kindergarten in Arizona. Our key dependent variable in this study is thus labor force participation, both on the extensive as well as the intensive margin. We expect that women who have age-eligible children will respond to the availability of full time kindergarten in public school system by increasing labor force participation – both in terms of overall employment as well as full-time employment as opposed to part time employment.