Coleção de Artigos em Andamento [Working Papers]

Resultados da Pesquisa

Agora exibindo 1 - 1 de 1

Political competition and the provision of early childhood education and care: evidence from Brazil
(2022) Portella, Alysson Lorenzon; Tebaldi, Raquel
The objective of this paper is to investigate whether higher political competition induces the expansion of public early childhood education and care (ECEC) services using Brazil as a case study. Public ECEC services are provided mainly by Brazilian municipalities and although enrolment for children aged 0 to 3 is not mandatory, it has increased continuously in the last two decades, with large heterogeneity across municipalities. In addition, electoral rules in Brazil establishes a dual-ballot system only for municipalities with more than 200,000 registered voters. This provides an exogenous variation in political competition that enables us to evaluate its impact on ECEC provision through a regression discontinuity design. We find that average estimated municipal crèche net enrolment rates are around 3 percentage points larger in municipalities with the dual-ballot. ECEC expenditure levels are also higher in these municipalities.