Investigating the Association Between Preschool Participation and Female Employment in Sweden

Sammanfattning: Women’s labour force participation has historically been impeded by their traditional role of taking care of children, a problem that has been reduced with the emergence of formal daycare. However, one problem that remains is that many children in Sweden still do not participate in preschool. Among these children, there is an overrepresentation of foreign-born children and children from low-income households. This study investigates if there is a general association between preschool participation and female employment. We use panel data on municipalities in Sweden, spanning from 2005 to 2019. A fixed e↵ects model with time dummies is applied to account for some unobserved factors. We find a small positive association between preschool participation and female employment. Moreover, we investigate if the association is di↵erent for municipalities with high shares of foreign-born women and low-income households by including interaction variables in the model. The results show that the association is weaker for municipalities with high shares of foreign-born women. No similar di↵erence is found for municipalities with high shares of low-income households.