Early Education, Preferences, and Decision-Making Abilities: Gender Differences in Social Preferences

Joana Cardim, Education Policy Insitute
Pedro Carneiro, University College London, Department of Economics,
Leandro Carvalho, University of Southern California, Center for Economic and Social Research
Damien De Walque, 1818 H Street NW

This paper studies the causal effects of daycare attendance on children’s economic preferences and decision-making abilities, exploiting a lottery system that randomized admissions into oversubscribed daycare centers in Rio de Janeiro. Overall, daycare attendance had no effect on either economic preferences or decision-making abilities. It did increase, however, aversion to disadvantageous inequality (having less than one’s peer). This increase is driven mostly by girls, a result that reproduces in a different study that randomized admissions into preschool education. A natural question is why the daycare lottery changed the social preferences of girls but not of boys. One possible explanation is that it changed girls’ perceptions of gender roles, including about how accommodating they are expected to be and how acceptable it is for girls to be more concerned with their own personal wellbeing. This might be particularly relevant in Brazil where families and daycare centers seem to model gender roles differently.

Keywords: Children, Adolescents, and Youth, Gender Dynamics, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination

See paper.