Based On: Chloe Gibbs, Jocelyn Wikle, and Riley Wilson, “A Matter of Time? Measuring Effects of Public
Schooling Expansions on Families,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, forthcoming.
Key Takeaway:
By extending the school day, full-day kindergarten relaxes binding time constraints for families— especially mothers—leading to substantial increases in maternal employment and household economic stability without adverse effects on children’s academic outcomes.
Over the past three decades, the structure of public kindergarten has shifted from predominantly half-day programs to full-day provision, with more than 80 percent of kindergarteners now enrolled in full-day programs. By extending the school day, public schooling may serve as an implicit childcare subsidy. Full-day kindergarten programs provide families with additional hours of care that would otherwise need to be supplied by parents, extended family members, or private childcare providers. In this way, full-day kindergarten may lead to meaningful changes in mothers’ labor supply and household resource allocation.
This research shows how families respond to changes in access to full-day kindergarten. Using large-scale national data and quasi-experimental variation in full-day kindergarten availability, the authors find that full-day kindergarten expansions significantly increase maternal employment, reduce time pressures associated with midday caregiving and transportation, and reduce reliance on paid childcare for some families. These shifts did not come at the expense of children’s academic outcomes. Together, these findings position full-day kindergarten as an important policy lever for family well-being, gender equity, and child development.
Policy Context and the Expansion of Kindergarten
Once the exception, full-day kindergarten has become the norm for kindergarten, with over 80 percent of kindergarteners enrolled in full-day programs. This growth is one of the most dramatic but least examined changes to the delivery of early childhood education in the US. Unlike many early childhood interventions that are targeted to specific demographics, the shift to full-day kindergarten has evolved into a broadly universal policy affecting families across income, race, and educational groups.
This change occurred unevenly across states and regions and does not track closely with how progressive other early childhood education policies are. The trend toward full-day programming began largely in the South, followed by the Northeast and Midwest, with full-day kindergarten participation lagging in the West. Trends in full-day kindergarten participation are similar across family structures, maternal education levels, and racial and ethnic groups.
Measuring the Effect on Families
To estimate the effect of full-day kindergarten expansions, the authors utilize the uneven rollout of expansion across states and over time. Full-day kindergarten’s adoption was primarily driven by changes in education funding and state mandates, rather than by shifts in parental employment or preferences.
The authors compare parents with kindergarten-aged children to otherwise similar parents with slightly older children who were therefore unaffected by changes in kindergarten schedules. They then track employment and time use patterns for these two groups as full-day kindergarten became more widely available to understand how longer school days affect labor force participation and time use. Importantly, the analysis focuses solely on policy-driven changes rather than on families opting into full-day programming. This focus allows the authors to show the observed changes in parental employment because of full-day kindergarten itself, not differences between families who choose full-day programs and those who do not.
Primary Findings
Parental Labor Supply and Time Use
Full-day kindergarten expansions substantially increased maternal labor supply. Access to full-day kindergarten significantly increased the likelihood that mothers of kindergarten-aged children were employed, raised the number of weeks they worked per year, and shifted some mothers from nonemployment into both part-time and full-time jobs. By contrast, fathers’ employment was largely unaffected, emphasizing that childcare and school schedules remain a more binding constraint on mothers’ labor supply.
Expansions in full-day kindergarten can explain roughly 2 percentage points of the total 8.5 percentage-point increase in employment among mothers of five- and six-year olds between 1992 and 2022. This finding means that full-day kindergarten expansions account for as much as 24 percent of the growth in employment of mothers with kindergarten-aged children during this time frame.
The driving force behind these gains is likely mothers’ newfound time. The authors use nationally representative time-use data to explore the potential ways families adjust to the half- and full-day schedules. These data show that mothers of children in full-day kindergarten spend more time working during school hours, less time in home production, and less time transporting their children midday than mothers of half-day kindergartners do. The data also show that daily schedules of mothers with children in full-day programming more closely resemble those of mothers with older school-age children.
Importantly, measures of “quality time” like reading or focused caregiving look similar for mothers of full- and half-day kindergartners. Instead, mothers with children in school for the longer day spend less time on midday supervision and midday transportation—tasks that are difficult to combine with paid work. These data on how families spend their time point to the role of full-day kindergarten in relaxing otherwise-binding time constraints rather than crowding out high-quality parental investments.
Childcare Expenses and Household Resources
For families without younger children in the household, increased access to full-day kindergarten reduced the likelihood of a family paying for any childcare. For families with younger children, effects on any childcare spending were smaller and less precise—and the total amount of childcare expenses for these families actually increased—reflecting the continued need for paid childcare for siblings not yet school-aged.
Full-day kindergarten does not eliminate childcare needs altogether, but it can meaningfully reduce costs and complexity for families at a particular stage of the life cycle. For households that already rely on paid care, full-day programming may free up resources that can be allocated to other needs like housing, education, or savings.
Children's Academic Outcomes
The authors find no evidence that the gains to maternal employment come at a cost to children’s academic outcomes. There is instead suggestive evidence of positive effects on reading achievement, particularly for Hispanic students, boys, and those who qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Effects on math achievement are smaller and less consistent.
Family Focus
Time constraints play a central role in shaping family decision-making. For families with young children, school schedules greatly shape caregiver time constraints, whether parents are able to work, and how they allocate household resources.
By extending the kindergarten day, public schools can effectively reduce the caregiving burden families face during early childhood years. This change relaxes binding time constraints and makes it easier for mothers to maintain consistent employment, without requiring families to rely more heavily on private childcare or informal arrangements. Seemingly modest changes in policy design can have large and lasting effects on how families balance work and caregiving during critical years of child development.