[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wop/jopovw/97.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Marital Status and Full-time/Part-time Work Status in Child Care Choices: Changing the Rules of the Game

Author

Listed:
  • Rachel Connelly
  • Jean Kimmel
Abstract
In an industrialized economy, it is nearly impossible to engage in market work while simultaneously caring for young children. Thus, if a mother is to engage in such work, someone else must care for her children during work hours. However, non-maternal child care is often expensive or of poor quality, making it difficult for low-income mothers, especially those making the welfare-to-work transition to successfully move into financial independence. Our research provides new detailed information to policy makers who are interested in facilitating the welfare- to-work transition, and in encouraging efforts towards financial independence for the working poor. We fill several critical gaps in the existing child care literature by focusing on differences across marital status and between full-time versus part-time work status. Because child care utilization and expenditure patterns vary across these factors, detailed information broken down in this way will help inform the policy debate. This project serves as a direct response to the call for new child care research issued recently by the Council of Economic Advisors (December 1997). Much of the previous literature either focused strictly on married mothers or simply controlled for marital status with a dichotomous variable. We include both married and unmarried mothers in our analyses by stratifying our sample by marital status throughout the empirical work. In addition to the descriptive analyses, we estimate two distinct econometric models to study the differences in the effect of child care costs on employment status by marital status and differences in mode of child care use by marital status and employment status. First, using predicted measures for child care prices and wages, we estimate an ordered probit model of employment status in which the possible categories are full-time employment, part-time employment and not employed. This estimation produces separate child care price elasticities of employment for full-time employment and for part-time employment. We find that for married women the elasticity of full-time employment with respect to changes in the price of child care is much larger (in absolute value) than the elasticity of part-time employment with respect to the price of child care. On the other hand, for single mothers part-time employment has a larger elasticity with respect to the price of child care than full-time employment. Second, we estimate a multinomial logit model to explain the determinants of the choice of child care mode, while controlling for the probability of full-time employment given than one is employed. Here we find some evidence that an increased probability of full-time employment is associated with an increase in the use of center care and a reduction in the use of relative care. For single mothers, the effect of the price of care seems to move together for home-based care and center-based care.

Suggested Citation

  • Rachel Connelly & Jean Kimmel, 1999. "Marital Status and Full-time/Part-time Work Status in Child Care Choices: Changing the Rules of the Game," JCPR Working Papers 97, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:wop:jopovw:97
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patricia M. Anderson & Philip B. Levine, 1999. "Child Care and Mothers' Employment Decisions," NBER Working Papers 7058, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Susan L. Averett & H. Elizabeth Peters & Donald M. Waldman, 1997. "Tax Credits, Labor Supply, And Child Care," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(1), pages 125-135, February.
    3. Hotz, V.J. & Kilburn, M.R., 1995. "Regulating Child Care: The Effetcs of State Regulation on Child Care Demand and its Cost," Papers 95-03, RAND - Labor and Population Program.
    4. Blau, David M & Robins, Philip K, 1988. "Child-Care Costs and Family Labor Supply," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(3), pages 374-381, August.
    5. Lisa Powell, 1998. "Part-time versus full-time work and child care costs: evidence for married mothers," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 503-511.
    6. Ribar, David C, 1995. "A Structural Model of Child Care and the Labor Supply of Married Women," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(3), pages 558-597, July.
    7. David C. Ribar, 1992. "Child Care and the Labor Supply of Married Women: Reduced Form Evidence," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 27(1), pages 134-165.
    8. Lisa M. Powell, 1997. "The Impact of Child Care Cost on the Labour Supply of Married Mothers: Evidence from Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 30(3), pages 577-594, August.
    9. Blank, Rebecca M, 1988. "Simultaneously Modeling the Supply of Weeks and Hours of Work among Female Household Heads," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(2), pages 177-204, April.
    10. Berger, Mark C & Black, Dan A, 1992. "Child Care Subsidies, Quality of Care, and the Labor Supply of Low-Income, Single Mothers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(4), pages 635-642, November.
    11. Connelly, Rachel & DeGraff, Deborah S & Levison, Deborah, 1996. "Women's Employment and Child Care in Brazil," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(3), pages 619-656, April.
    12. Jean Kimmel, 1998. "Child Care Costs As A Barrier To Employment For Single And Married Mothers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(2), pages 287-299, May.
    13. Sandra L. Hofferth & Douglas A. Wissoker, 1992. "Price, Quality, and Income in Child Care Choice," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 27(1), pages 70-111.
    14. Charles Michalopoulos & Philip K. Robins, 2000. "Employment and child-care choices in Canada and the United States," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 33(2), pages 435-470, May.
    15. David M. Blau & Alison P. Hagy, 1998. "The Demand for Quality in Child Care," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(1), pages 104-146, February.
    16. Kimmel, Jean, 1995. "The Effectiveness of Child-Care Subsidies in Encouraging the Welfare-to-Work Transition of Low-Income Single Mothers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 271-275, May.
    17. Lehrer, Evelyn L, 1989. "Preschoolers with Working Mothers: An Analysis of the Determinants of Child Care Arrangements," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 1(4), pages 251-268.
    18. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "A Theory of Marriage," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, pages 299-351, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Mroz, Thomas A, 1987. "The Sensitivity of an Empirical Model of Married Women's Hours of Work to Economic and Statistical Assumptions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(4), pages 765-799, July.
    20. Connelly, Rachel, 1992. "The Effect of Child Care Costs on Married Women's Labor Force Participation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(1), pages 83-90, February.
    21. Charles Michalopoulos & Philip K. Robins & Irwin Garfinkel, 1992. "A Structural Model of Labor Supply and Child Care Demand," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 27(1), pages 166-203.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Olivier Guillot, 2004. "Choix d’activité des mères vivant en couple et recours aux services de garde d’enfants," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 162(1), pages 51-69.
    2. Jay Bainbridge & Marcia K. Meyers & Jane Waldfogel, 2003. "Child Care Policy Reform and the Employment of Single Mothers," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 84(4), pages 771-791, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Blau, 2003. "Child Care Subsidy Programs," NBER Chapters, in: Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, pages 443-516, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Müller, Kai-Uwe & Wrohlich, Katharina, 2020. "Does subsidized care for toddlers increase maternal labor supply? Evidence from a large-scale expansion of early childcare," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    3. Blau, David & Currie, Janet, 2006. "Pre-School, Day Care, and After-School Care: Who's Minding the Kids?," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 20, pages 1163-1278, Elsevier.
    4. Guyonne Kalb, 2009. "Children, Labour Supply and Child Care: Challenges for Empirical Analysis," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 42(3), pages 276-299, September.
    5. Tekin, Erdal, 2005. "Child care subsidy receipt, employment, and child care choices of single mothers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 1-6, October.
    6. Rachel Connelly & Jean Kimmel, 2003. "The Effect of Child Care Costs on the Employment and Welfare Recipiency of Single Mothers," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 69(3), pages 498-519, January.
    7. Olivier Guillot, 2004. "Choix d’activité des mères vivant en couple et recours aux services de garde d’enfants," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 162(1), pages 51-69.
    8. Yusuf Emre Akgunduz & Janneke Plantenga, 2018. "Child Care Prices And Maternal Employment: A Meta†Analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 118-133, February.
    9. Y.E. Akgündüz & J. Plantenga, 2015. "Childcare Prices and Maternal Employment: a Meta-Analysis," Working Papers 15-14, Utrecht School of Economics.
    10. Robert Breunig & Xiaodong Gong & Anthony King, 2012. "Partnered Women's Labour Supply and Child‐Care Costs in Australia: Measurement Error and the Child‐Care Price," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(s1), pages 51-69, June.
    11. Denise Doiron & Guyonne Kalb, 2005. "Demands for Child Care and Household Labour Supply in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 81(254), pages 215-236, September.
    12. Sean P. Sall, 2014. "Maternal Labor Supply And The Availability Of Public Pre-K: Evidence From The Introduction Of Prekindergarten Into American Public Schools," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(1), pages 17-34, January.
    13. Sandra L. Hofferth & Duncan D. Chaplin & Douglas A. Wissoker & Philip K. Robins, 1996. "Choice Characteristics And Parents' Child-Care Decisions," Rationality and Society, , vol. 8(4), pages 453-495, November.
    14. Chris Herbst & Burt Barnow, 2008. "Close to Home: A Simultaneous Equations Model of the Relationship Between Child Care Accessibility and Female Labor Force Participation," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 128-151, March.
    15. Colm Harmon & Claire Finn & Arnaud Chevalier & Tarja Viitanen, 2006. "The economics of early childhood care and education : technical research paper for the National Economic and Social Forum," Open Access publications 10197/671, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    16. Helmut Mahringer & Christine Zulehner, 2015. "Child-care costs and mothers’ employment rates: an empirical analysis for Austria," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 837-870, December.
    17. Daniela Del Boca & Daniela Vuri, 2007. "The mismatch between employment and child care in Italy: the impact of rationing," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 20(4), pages 805-832, October.
    18. Katharina Wrohlich, 2004. "Child Care Costs and Mothers' Labor Supply: An Empirical Analysis for Germany," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 412, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    19. Jonah B. Gelbach, 2002. "Public Schooling for Young Children and Maternal Labor Supply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 307-322, March.
    20. Chris Herbst, 2010. "The labor supply effects of child care costs and wages in the presence of subsidies and the earned income tax credit," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 199-230, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J5 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wop:jopovw:97. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/jcuchus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.