Tracing the evolution of preschool’s impact on education over a century: Spain, 1900-1973

ABSTRACT Preschool is acknowledged as a strategy for promoting long-term educational attainment and fostering equality of educational opportunities. Most of these expectations are based on evidence from rather recent periods. Leveraging retrospective data from cohorts born between 1900 and 1973 in Spain, we examine the historical evolution of returns to early education and its potential for equalization. We argue that this equalizing potential is contingent upon the degree of selectivity in accessing and completing a specific educational stage. Specifically, only when a given level becomes less selective does preschool contribute to increased educational equity. Our evidence unveils two novel insights. On the one hand, the magnitude of returns underwent important changes over time, with more recent periods demonstrating diminished payoffs. On the other, the broadly documented equalizing potential of preschool is a function of the selectivity in accessing each educational level, suggesting that preschool has not always been an equalizing investment.