Academic performance and type of early childhood care

•We study effects of type of early child care.•We distinguish between enrollment in center based care and family day care at age 2.•We measure effects on grades and choice of academic track in high school.•Center based day care improves grades in Danish language around age 16.•Effects are larger for boys and for children of mothers with lower-level education.

This is one of the few studies that estimate the effects of type of childhood care on academic achievement at higher grade levels by linking day care registers to educational registers. We use entire birth cohorts of ethnic Danish children, enrolled in either center based day care or family day care at age 2. Exploiting municipality variation in the composition of types of child care our results show that center based day care improves grades in Danish language in the final year of compulsory school with around 0.2 standard deviations.