The effect of child care on children school outcome

There seems to be a general consensus among empirical researchers on the factors explaining children's school outcome. One of the determinants which is little discussed in the Anglo-American literature and is almost ignored among German researchers is a child's pre-school education. Given this background this article focuses particularly on the effects of a child's pre-school education on her or his school outcome. We present an empirical analysis to explain children's school outcome at age 14. The analysis is based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Different probit models are estimated for German and non-German children. For German children the results demonstrate that our information about a child's kindergarten-attendance does not explain his or her school outcome. However, for children in non-German households the reverse is true. Their school effort is significantly enhanced by a kindergarten visit although we cannot control for the quality of kindergarten-care. Furthermore, the analysis shows that controlling for effects of a pre-school education makes the effects of some other well known ''school outcome determinants'' as for instance parents' education and household-income less powerful.