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The social care-taking of the city-kids. Determinants for day-care attendance in early twentieth century southern Sweden

Elwert, Annika LU and Quaranta, Luciana LU (2022) In Lund Papers in Economic Demography
Abstract
In this paper, we analyze one of the early welfare interventions in the Swedish welfare state targeted towards mothers and young children: the introduction of a child day-care system. Because quantitative research on day-cares in historical settings is generally scarce, in this study, we focus on the determinants of day-care enrollment in southern Sweden during the early twentieth century. We use unique longitudinal micro-level data for the city of Landskrona obtained from the Scanian Economic Demographic Database, which has been linked to individual-level records of day-care attendance for children born between1900 and 1935. Event-history techniques are employed to analyze the importance of factors such as household composition, parental... (More)
In this paper, we analyze one of the early welfare interventions in the Swedish welfare state targeted towards mothers and young children: the introduction of a child day-care system. Because quantitative research on day-cares in historical settings is generally scarce, in this study, we focus on the determinants of day-care enrollment in southern Sweden during the early twentieth century. We use unique longitudinal micro-level data for the city of Landskrona obtained from the Scanian Economic Demographic Database, which has been linked to individual-level records of day-care attendance for children born between1900 and 1935. Event-history techniques are employed to analyze the importance of factors such as household composition, parental socio-economic background, marital status of the mother, and mother’s occupation. Of the studied children, 8 percent were ever enrolled in daycares, most of them around the ages 3 to 6. The results show that the mother’s marital status, household SES, the presence of other adult females in the household and mother’s occupation are all significant determinants of day-care attendance for children. In this study, we
show that day-care attendance followed a negative SES gradient and was most common among children of single mothers, in the early twentieth century in southern Sweden. (Less)
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author
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type
Working paper/Preprint
publication status
published
subject
in
Lund Papers in Economic Demography
issue
2022:1
pages
23 pages
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
d62a6bdb-8d6a-4e06-8cdd-3a84e2a22ad1
alternative location
https://www.ed.lu.se/media/ed/papers/working_papers/LPED%202022%201.pdf
date added to LUP
2022-05-30 10:33:53
date last changed
2022-05-30 13:13:04
@misc{d62a6bdb-8d6a-4e06-8cdd-3a84e2a22ad1,
  abstract     = {{In this paper, we analyze one of the early welfare interventions in the Swedish welfare state targeted towards mothers and young children: the introduction of a child day-care system. Because quantitative research on day-cares in historical settings is generally scarce, in this study, we focus on the determinants of day-care enrollment in southern Sweden during the early twentieth century. We use unique longitudinal micro-level data for the city of Landskrona obtained from the Scanian Economic Demographic Database, which has been linked to individual-level records of day-care attendance for children born between1900 and 1935. Event-history techniques are employed to analyze the importance of factors such as household composition, parental socio-economic background, marital status of the mother, and mother’s occupation. Of the studied children, 8 percent were ever enrolled in daycares, most of them around the ages 3 to 6. The results show that the mother’s marital status, household SES, the presence of other adult females in the household and mother’s occupation are all significant determinants of day-care attendance for children. In this study, we <br/>show that day-care attendance followed a negative SES gradient and was most common among children of single mothers, in the early twentieth century in southern Sweden.}},
  author       = {{Elwert, Annika and Quaranta, Luciana}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Working Paper}},
  number       = {{2022:1}},
  series       = {{Lund Papers in Economic Demography}},
  title        = {{The social care-taking of the city-kids. Determinants for day-care attendance in early twentieth century southern Sweden}},
  url          = {{https://www.ed.lu.se/media/ed/papers/working_papers/LPED%202022%201.pdf}},
  year         = {{2022}},
}