Children, Labour Supply and Child Care: Challenges for Empirical Analysis

Abstract

"The aim of this article is to give an overview of the important issues relating to the labour supply of the primary carer in a household. Child care plays a central role in allowing the primary carer time away from the young children in a household. Therefore, child-care use is a central topic of this article, as well. There are a number of different aspects to child care, such as the price, quality, availability and type of service. This article discusses the analytical problems and challenges, taking Australian data, policy and experience as a focus, but drawing on a wide range of international empirical studies. It reports the results from previous research on child-care use and labour supply and it outlines the areas requiring more study. The focus of the article is on economic research." Copyright (c)2009 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research.

Women, Work, and the Economy: Macroeconomic Gains from Gender Equity

“…In analyzing data for 10 different countries, Gong, Breunig, and King (2010) and Kalb (2009) find that the elasticity of female labor supply with respect to the price of child care ranges from -0.13 to -0.2. Hence, if the price of childcare is reduced by 50 percent, the labor supply of young mothers will rise on the order of 6.5 to 10 percent.…”

Full Childcare Coverage: Higher Maternal Labour Supply and Childcare Usage?

“…Anderson and Levine (1999) , Brewer and Paull (2004) and Kalb (2009) Independently from the type of methodology, the literature about labour supply and childcare demand can be broadly classified into two categories depending on the justifications for the demand for childcare. The first stream, known as the Cost of Working approach, considers childcare only as a way to make time available for parents to engage in market work.…”

Maternal employment: the impact of triple rationing in childcare

“…Anderson and Levine (1999), Brewer and Paull (2004) and Kalb (2009) provide overviews of the existing studies related to childcare and labor supply. This latter study discusses in detail how the monetary cost, availability and quality of childcare affect parental labor supply decisions for different countries.…”

“…These effects are most often presented as elasticities that report the change of labor supply and labor market participation which results from a change in childcare prices. Anderson and Levine (1999) and Kalb (2009) provide summary tables of estimated elasticities for different countries and subgroups. Their estimates vary across a wide range but indicate that, on average, childcare prices affect labor supply negatively.…”