Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Brazil passed an educational reform in 2007 which incentivized municipalities’ investment in daycare and preschool education. Unlike before 2007, when a state education fund was collected from each municipality and redistributed based on the number of enrolled students in primary and secondary schools, the new educational reform broadened the criteria for fund redistribution to include daycare and preschool students. This generated a wide variation of daycares and preschools expansion across municipalities within the states, particularly for the enrollment of daycare. This study uses the variation to examine the impacts of daycare expansion on fertility rate – an unintended consequence of the policy- at the municipal level. While the existing literature mostly focused on the impacts of daycare expansion on maternal employment or human capital accumulation, this paper contributes to the limited evidence on fertility outcomes, especially in a developing country context. Using the municipal level of birth registry, school census, and national survey data, I plan to conduct multiple robust checks to support main results.