<mark>cutoff. However, this restriction means that the estimated treatment effect can only be estimated “locally” within that narrow window and for those receiving childcare (“compliers”).</mark> <mark>Studies from Argentina</mark> (Berlinski, Galiani, and Mc Ewan 2011), Brazil (Ryu 2020), and <mark>Vietnam</mark> (Dang, Hiraga, and Cuong 2019 <mark>) use this approach to contrast the employment of mothers of children born on either side of the preschool enrollment cut-off. In Vietnam, all children 0-5 were included in the sample, taking account the September cut-off for primary school enrollment; differences in age were also explored separately (i.e., age 2 vs. age 3 in September). In Brazil and Argentina, children above and below the compulsory education enrollment cut-off of age 4 were studied. Similar to the balance checks in the RCT approach, Berlinski, G</mark> aliani, and Mc Ewan <mark>(2011) and Ryu (2020) confirm the smoothness of covariates around the birthdate of interest, but Dang, H</mark> iraga, and Cuong <mark>(2019) use only a small set of exogenous covariates.</mark> <mark>In Vietnam and Brazil, there was no significant impact of childcare provision on the likelihood of mothers working. Dang, H</mark> iraga, and Cuong (2019 <mark>) theorize that this is because over 90 percent of mothers are already working in Vietnam. Nevertheless, in Brazil 50% of the mothers were working and in</mark> Argentina only 30%-50% of mothers were working, and these two studies had contrasting findings: there was no change in employment in Brazil, while in Argentina access to childcare enabled 13 mothers to start work for every 100 children that start preschool.

<mark>The Vietnam and Brazilian studies offer insights relating to employment quality that are not often explored. In Vietnam, childcare provision results in an increase in the probability of wage-earning employment (41%), formal employment (26%), and long-term (2 years) participation in the labor market (38%).</mark> All of these shifts result in movement out of farm employment, likely into higher productivity jobs. The probability of being poor is also reduced by 22 percentage points. In Brazil, there was a 46% increase in the probability of being formally employed, though only among women with no other younger children and no relatives in the household, and conditional on participating in childcare. The Argentinian study does not focus on job quality, but it does find that the probability of working more than 20 hours per week<sup>10</sup> increased by 19 percentage points for mothers whose children attended preschool.

The most unique finding relating to hours worked among this set—and indeed among the entire set of studies—comes from Brazil; among mothers without additional younger children who took up work the increase in hours worked corresponded almost exactly to the child care time (Ryu 2020). Preschool is about four hours per day and the increase in hours worked by these mothers was 23 hours. There was a corresponding decrease in household chores of 18 hours. No other study finds such strong alignment, though in some cases this is because estimates are for the population as a whole rather than for the specific group of mothers who entered the workforce.

<mark>All three studies examine various bandwidths to check sensitivity of the estimates and do placebo tests using alternate birth months (e.g., should a one-month difference in age impact maternal employment), providing confidence in their estimates. Again, these studies provide localized estimates (LATE) for mothers of children of a specific age, and they do include the full national population.</mark>

> 10 ILO defines 21-34 hours per week as “substantial part-time”.

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