TY - JOUR A1 - Sandner, Malte A1 - Thomsen, Stephan L. A1 - González, Libertad T1 - Preventing Child Maltreatment: Beneficial Side Effects of Public Childcare JF - The Economic Journal N2 - We investigate the impact of public childcare provision on the incidence of severe child maltreatment. For identification, we exploit a reform that expanded early childcare in Germany, generating large temporal and spatial variation in childcare coverage at the county level. Using high-quality administrative data covering all reported cases of child maltreatment in Germany by county and year, we find that an increase in childcare slots by one percentage point in a county reduced child maltreatment cases leading to out-of-home placement by about 1%. Our results suggest that the provision of universal public childcare may be more cost effective than previously thought. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae070 SN - 0013-0133 PB - Oxford University Press (OUP) ER -