Parental choices and the Copenhagen daycare assignment mechanism

A centralized Copenhagen daycare assignment mechanism has been in operation for more than three decades. The most crucial feature of this assignment mechanism is that parents must make key decisions when their child is four months of age. In principle the key decisions are the following:

Choice 1: Choose a daycare start date

Choice 2: Choose a daycare

Choice 3: Choose joint parental leaves

However, aspects of the Copenhagen imply that these decisions are closely related.

1. The choice of a daycare and the choice of a daycare start date are interacted in the Copenhagen daycare assignment, because parents entertain improved daycare options when they express more patient preferences. Therefore, the most sought after daycares are available only to parents who are prepared to wait.

2. Public daycare is an extremely option for most parents. Therefore, since almost all parents in Copenhagen find it necessary to have at least one parent at home before daycare starts, the planned daycare start date interacts with the allocation of who stays at home before the daycare starts.

In the Copenhagen daycare assignment system, parents can sign up to the wait lists of any two daycares of the 300+ daycares in the city. Parents must sign up to these wait lists by the time the child is 4 months or risk a lower priority. Importantly, parents see the children ahead of their children in the wait list. Therefore, all parents have important and relevant information concerning expected wait times.