This meta-analysis investigates whether the causal estimates of universal childcare programs on children’s development are influenced by publication bias. Analyzing 1,500 estimates across 49 studies published between 2000 and 2022, I find that selective reporting significantly overstates benefits. After correcting for publication bias, impacts shrink to less than 1% of a standard deviation, with short-lived educational gains of 7%, negative effects on non-cognitive skills, and crime reduction of about 10%. Gains for disadvantaged and immigrant children reduce from 9% to 2% and 25% to 5%, respectively. Overall, these findings challenge prior claims of large, long-term benefits arising from universal childcare programs.
@article{brugarolas_2025b,title={Publication Bias and the Benefits of Universal Childcare for Children},author={Brugarolas, Pablo},journal={Submitted},year={2026},}
@article{ayllon_etal_2025,title={Increased flexibility and the position of women in the labour market: Has it changed after the pandemic?},author={},journal={Work in progress},year={2026},}
@article{ayllon_brugarolas_2025,title={When early gains fade: The limits of dynamic complementarity under austerity},author={Ayllón, Sara and Brugarolas, Pablo},journal={Work in progress},year={2026},}
Journal Article
Early Childhood Education and Care and mother’s labor supply: The role of publication and weak causal design biases
This paper conducts a meta-analysis of causal studies examining the impact of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) programs on maternal employment in developed countries. Using 981 effect-size estimates from 35 studies, I harmonize employment outcomes into percentage-point changes and assemble 70 study-level characteristics describing program design, subgroups, contexts, and empirical strategies. I apply a battery of linear and non-linear publication-bias tests and use model-averaging methods to account jointly for publication bias and what I term weak design bias, defined by whether studies satisfy core identification diagnostics for RDD, IV, RCT, and DiD designs. Publication bias is modest but non-negligible: correcting only for selective reporting reduces the descriptive mean effect of around 5 percentage points (p.p.) to roughly 1 p.p., yielding insignificant implied intention-to-treat (ITT) effects and average treatment-on-the-treated (ATT) effects of about 4 p.p. Once I also reweight the literature toward designs that meet identification checks, the implied ITT effect rises to about 8 p.p., and the implied ATT effect stabilizes around 10 p.p. The corrected ATT effects are particularly pronounced for child care programs, delivered by public providers, and implemented in high-employment settings. Overall, the results suggest that modern ECEC expansions generate sizeable employment gains for already attached mothers facing binding care constraints. They also provide bias-corrected benchmarks for evaluating ECEC reforms and their contribution to mitigating child penalties and gender gaps in labour-market outcomes.
@article{brugarolas2026,title={Early Childhood Education and Care and mother’s labor supply: The role of publication and weak causal design biases},author={Brugarolas, Pablo},journal={Review of Economics of the Household},year={2026},url={https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-026-09847-z},}
The increasing use of information and communications technologies (ICT) in education has raised concerns about exacerbating existing educational inequalities, particularly for students who lack interest or confidence in using digital devices. Drawing from data of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this chapter documents the extent to which school-aged children in Europe are digitally disengaged and/or lack digital confidence. We also analyse the socio-economic and demographic characteristics that describe both profiles. By shedding light on these challenges, this research can inform policies and interventions aimed to ensure equitable access and success in digital learning environments.
@incollection{ayllon2024ict,title={ICT use and children’s self-reported life satisfaction},author={Ayllón, Sara and Brugarolas, Pablo and Lado, Samuel},booktitle={Understanding The Everyday Digital Lives of Children and Young People},editor={Holmarsdottir, H. and Seland, I. and Hyggen, C. and Roth, M.},publisher={Springer International Publishing},year={2024},page={1573-7152},url={https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46929-9_2},}
Journal Article
New estimates for inequality of opportunity in Europe using elastic net algorithms
This paper provides new estimates for inequality of opportunity (IOp) in Europe between 2005 and 2019, using data from EU-SILC and elastic net algorithms. We document three different trends: some countries showed significant improvement over time; others saw a notable increase in IOp; and yet others reversed the rise in inequality post-Great Recession. Importantly, our new machine-learning estimates show consistency with more established approaches.
@article{Ayllon2024new,author={Ayllón, Sara and Brugarolas, Pablo and Lado, Samuel},title={New estimates for inequality of opportunity in Europe using elastic net algorithms},journal={Applied Economics Letters},year={2024},pages={1--5},url={https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2024.2424948},}
2021
Journal Article
The Causal Effect of Polls on Turnout Intention: A Local Randomization Regression Discontinuity Approach
This letter reports the results of a study that combined a unique natural experiment and a local randomization regression discontinuity approach to estimate the effect of polls on turnout intention. We found that the release of a poll increases turnout intention by 5%. This effect is robust to a number of falsification tests of predetermined covariates, placebo outcomes, and changes in the time window selected to estimate the effect. The letter discusses the advantages of the local randomization approach over the standard continuity-based design to study important cases in political science where the running variable is discrete; a method that may expand the range of empirical topics that can be analyzed using regression discontinuity methods.
@article{brugarolas_miller_2021,title={The Causal Effect of Polls on Turnout Intention: A Local Randomization Regression Discontinuity Approach},volume={29},doi={10.1017/pan.2020.50},number={4},journal={Political Analysis},publisher={Cambridge University Press},author={Brugarolas, Pablo and Miller, Luis},url={https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2020.50},year={2021},pages={554–560},}