employment-based vouchers in the large, high-income location, where wage offers are highest.

To summarize, policy effects are qualitatively similar across locations, and largest for universal, employment-based, and quality-based vouchers. Which of these three policies is best depends not only on the policy maker’s goal–as is the case for the aggregate economy– but also on the specific location. If the goal is maximizing mothers’ labor force participation, then employment-based vouchers are the best policy for all locations except the large, lowincome location. If the goal, instead, is maximizing average child development gains, then universal vouchers are the best option for small locations whereas quality-based vouchers are the best option for large ones.

# **6.4 Comparison with Previous Literature**

Three features characterize our environment and policy simulations: (1) they illustrate largescale policies, (2) center-based provision is private and quality endogenous, and (3) children are two years old. These features reflect margins for meaningful expansion in the US and represent the status quo for center-based care supply. However, they complicate the comparison with previous literature particularly for the US, where no reform includes all three features. Hence, the literature cited here for the US mostly focuses on the 3 to 5 age group.<sup>37</sup> Only contributions on a few case studies include interventions in our age group.<sup>38</sup> Case studies are difficult to compare with our setting for three main reasons. First, they have a very narrow scope, focusing on specific socioeconomic groups and small numbers of children, and are unlikely to trigger equilibrium effects. Second, the child care centers studied are usually purpose-built and provide a level of quality much higher than even our sample’s highest quality centers. Third, they typically do not monitor mothers’ labor supply decisions and outcomes. Still, by looking at a wider range of countries and focusing on some aspects of previous studies and interventions, we can establish some meaningful comparisons.

Universal voucher simulated effects can be compared with those in Baker et al. (2008), who study the impact of a major child care subsidy in the Canadian province of Quebec.<sup>39</sup> As in our simulations, they find an increase in child care use and female labor supply. Contrary to our simulations, they find no effect on children’s cognitive outcomes, presumably because the subsidy was used by children from relatively affluent households who would otherwise have stayed home with their mothers. These children are likely to have highly educated mothers who could have provided child care of a quality equal or superior to the one provided by the centers. A similar result is implied by Fort et al. (2019), who study a program leading to a preschool enrollment increase for 2 year-old children in Bologna, Italy. Our theoretical model contains all the channels that could have generated results similar to those in Baker et al. (2008) and Fort et al. (2019). However, our simulation results are different likely because we allow for an endogenous adjustment of supply in response to the policy, thereby increasing

> 37Examples include the large literature on the expansion of public preschool provision (Cascio (2021), Cascio (2009), Fitzpatrick (2010) and Fitzpatrick (2012)) or contributions on case studies such as _Head Start_ (Currie and Thomas (1995) and Garces et al. (2002)) and the _Perry School_ (Heckman et al. (2010c)).

> 38See for example Love et al. (2005) evaluating _Early Head Start_ and Campbell et al. (2002) Campbell and Ramey (1994) studying _Abecedarian_ .

> 39All parents of children aged 0 to 4 were offered subsidized non-home based care $5 per day. Center-based care supply was expanded, as in our experiments.

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