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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. University of Wisconsin Press and The Board of Regents of the University of WisconsinSystem are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Human Resources. ABSTRACT This paper utilizes data from a Swedish household survey for 1984 (the HUS data) in combination with data on public child care fees and spaces per child by community. We argue that the subsidy rate and availability of spaces determined by the political leaders of the community is to a large extent exogenous to the household. The joint out-of-home child care and labor supply decision is analyzed by logit and ordered probit choice models. We find that the high quality public child care in Sweden encourages labor market activity of women with preschoolers even when the spouse's income is high, and that when spaces are not rationed, a lower price encourages use.

"In this paper we make use of the panel aspects of the German GSOEP, the Swedish HUS and the British BHPS data...[to analyze] labor force transitions triggered by child births of different birth orders.... We find that German and British women have even higher full-time labor force participation than Swedish women 12 months before the birth of the first child. The difference is more pronounced for second and third births than for first births. We suggest that these differences are caused by different family policy regimes where Germany can be characterized as a breadwinner regime and Sweden a regime oriented towards equal role sharing of father and mother. Our results on determinants of being in the labor force both after and before the birth of a child as well as determinants of the tempo of entering the labor force after birth show that women's own human capital is important both in Germany and Great Britain, whereas in Sweden also less educated women have entered the labor force by the time the child is 2 years old."

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"The focus of this paper is an empirical analysis of the effects of taxation on women's incentives to contribute to family income. Data on earnings and individual characteristics in 1984 for married or cohabiting Swedish couples...are used together with similar data on German couples.... The main features of the personal income taxation of the two countries have been programmed, and are used for simulating after tax incomes using both tax systems for both countries.... The difference between the Swedish and German tax systems is an important factor in explaining why Swedish women participate more than German women in the labor market, although paid parental leaves and subsidized childcare are other important explanations for the Swedish situation."