Childcare in the first three years coincides with a critical window of early development, offering a growth environment that is distinctive from family care in terms of daily routines, motor activities, social networks, and interactional contexts, and thus may have long-term implications for child development. Against the backdrop of low fertility and rapid population ageing, China has placed high expectations on childcare as part of its strategy for high-quality population development, yet empirical evidence on its child developmental consequences remains limited. Therefore, this study examines how early childcare services are associated with children's multidimensional development in China.

Drawing on data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) spanning 2010 to 2022, we link children's childcare experiences before age 3 to developmental outcomes in physical and health, cognitive-academic, and social-emotional domains observed between ages 3 and 15. Depending on the type of outcome measures, we use ordinary least square model, linear mixed effect model, and logistic random effects model for empirical analyses. To address non-random selection into childcare, we control for individual and family background characteristics, and further implement an advanced sensitivity analysis to confirm that our major findings are robust to unmeasured confounders that are up to three times as strong as those already adjusted for.

The findings indicate substantial selection into childcare service use： children born to better-educated parents, with non-agricultural Hukou, whose mothers had their first birth at an older age, and of lower birth order are more likely to receive early childcare services. Conditional on these factors, in the physical and health dimension, early childcare experience is significantly and negatively associated with stunting and illness frequency, and these effects are relatively stable over time. Meanwhile, early childcare has no significant relationship with overweight or obesity. In the cognitive-academic dimension, early childcare is not significantly related to verbal and numerical cognitive skills after 10, but it is associated with parents' positive and lasting ratings of academic performance in Chinese and mathematics, suggesting a modest yet sustained advantage in school achievement. In the social-emotional dimension, early childcare is not significantly associated with peer relationships, self-esteem or locus of control, but it shows a negative link with the sense of responsibility. This pattern is consistent with concerns that early and prolonged separation from parents is related to weakened parent-child attachments and limited social-emotional development. International evidence suggests, however, that high-quality childcare service and parenting interaction can mitigate or avoid potential social-emotional risks associated with early childcare experience.

This study provides new population-based evidence from China regarding the potential benefits and trade-offs of early childcare services on children's development. The results indicate that early childcare experience can support children's physical and health development and academic performance, while raising cautions about possible adverse effects on specific aspects of social-emotional development. These findings underscore the need to accelerate the development of an inclusive childcare service system in China. In doing so, it is essential to increase investment in high-quality childcare provision and strengthen coordination between childcare providers and families.