Political competition and the provision of early childhood education and care: evidence from Brazil

Abstract

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.