Association between the starting age of non-parental Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), and psycho-social problems in adolescence in West and East Germany – a natural experiment using data from the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS)

Table 3 Stratified Linear regression of the association between ECEC-start-age and psycho-social problems in adolescence after controlling for confounders by region (West/East Germany) (n = 1022)

	ECEC-start-age groups		SDQ Total Score		Externalizing Psycho-social Problems		Internalizing Psycho-social Problems
	ECEC-start-age groups	n	Beta (95%CI)	P	Beta (95%CI)	P	Beta (95%CI)	P
West Germany (n = 621)	Below age 1	45	2.9 (1.3,4.6)	< 0.001*	1.9 (0.9,3.0)	< 0.001*	1.0 (-0.2,2.1)	0.088
	Age 1–2	41	2.3 (-0.1,4.6)	0.055	1.7 (0.2,3.3)	0.029*	0.6 (-0.5,1.6)	0.300
	Age 2–3 (Reference group)	261
	Age 3 + and before schooling	185	1.2 (0.4,2.1)	0.006*	0.4 (-0.1,1.0)	0.094	0.8 (0.2,1.4)	0.005*
	Only cared in Family before schooling	89	0.9 (-0.5,2.3)	0.214	0.8 (-0.2,1.7)	0.108	0.1 (-0.6,0.9)	0.731
East Germany (n = 401)	Below age 1	99	0.3 (-1.3,1.9)	0.714	0.3 (-0.5,1.1)	0.514	0.0 (-1.1,1.1)	0.971
	Age 1–2	173	0.4 (-1.0,1.8)	0.589	0.6 (-0.03,1.3)	0.062	-0.3 (-1.3,0.7)	0.609
	Age 2–3 (Reference group)	105
	Age 3 + and before schooling	20	2.1 (-2.4,6.6)	0.363	0.8 (-1.2,2.8)	0.406	1.2 (-1.6,4.1)	0.394
	Only cared in Family before schooling	4	-1.4 (-5.1,2.4)	0.462	-0.6 (-2.0,0.7)	0.341	-0.7 (-4.0,2.5)	0.648

Covariates: age in adolescence, gender, schooling type, parents’ divorce by wave 2, and other baseline characters including social economic status, migrant status, number of older siblings, family situation, family cohesion, birth weight, obesity/overweight, age of mother at childbirth, and employment status of mother
* p < 0.05

ISSN: 2050-7283