Children who attend pre-school from the age of 3 are more likely to have a better education and job in the future than children who stay at home a year longer. This is especially true for children whose mothers have less education. This was found in a study conducted by Czech researchers.
'It is difficult to replace the stimuli and social skills in the home environment that a three-year-old child acquires in kindergarten, especially for children from a socio-economically weaker family background,' said one of the authors of the study, Klára Kalíškova.
Children under the age of four who are under their mother's all-day care are four percentage points more likely to be neither in education nor working at the age of 21-22 than children who started kindergarten at the age of three. In addition, they are six percentage points less likely to study at university.
Children of mothers without a high school diploma who live in a joint household with their mother at the age of 21-22 are more than nine percentage points more likely not to study or work. Theprobability of these children going to university is twelve percentage points lower, said the study's lead author, Alena Bičáková.
The study used data on the engagement in study and work of children whose parents were affected by the reform of the parental allowance in the Czech Republic in 1995, which extended its possible duration from three to four years. However, the guarantee of the mother's job retention was not extended at that time. According to the authors of the study, this resulted in as many as 38% of mothers of three-year-olds staying at home with their offspring.
The age range of 21 to 22 years was chosen not without coincidence. This age group makes it possible to monitor secondary school completion, employment on the labour market or participation in higher education, said Bičáková.
On theother hand, another 75 per cent of 21- to 22-year-olds share a household with their parents, and this is key to the analysis of differences in influence depending on the mother's level of education , the researcher added.