Froebel’s gifts: how the kindergarten movement changed the immigrant family

Abstract

Abstract Nineteenth-century social reformers promoted the establishment of kindergartens to facilitate the integration of immigrant children in the U.S. society. Exploiting newly collected data on historical kindergarten statistics, we evaluate the impact that the roll-out of the first kindergartens in U.S. cities had on immigrant families. We find that immigrant women exposed to kindergartens experienced a significant reduction in fertility. Their offspring were more likely to attend school, less likely to work during adolescence, and went on to have fewer children as adults. Kindergarten exposure also helped children of non-English-speaking households to acquire English proficiency, thereby illustrating the importance of kindergartens in the social integration of immigrant families. The observed fertility decline, in response to higher returns to education, is consistent with a child quantity–quality tradeoff.