Maternal employment: the impact of triple rationing in childcare

Vandelannoote, Dieter; Vanleenhove, Pieter; Decoster, André; Ghysels, Joris; Verbist, Gerlinde

doi:10.1007/s11150-014-9277-2

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For instance, there is some evidence that, in a situation of rationing, the availability of childcare will decline disproportionately in more disadvantaged and lower income neighbourhoods (Henley and Lyons, 2000;Vandenbroeck et al, 2008). Moreover, childcare rationing has a discouraging effect on maternal labour supply (Del Boca and Vuri, 2007;Vandelannoote et al, 2015;Wrohlich, 2011). Given the fact that low-skilled mothers have fewer labour market opportunities than their high-skilled counterparts, inequality in access to childcare services stemming from rationing might result in a negative feedback loop, exacerbating inequalities in the labour market as well.…”

Section: Universalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining patterns of inequality in childcare service use across 31 developed economies: A welfare state perspective

Lancker

Ghysels

2016

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Childcare services are increasingly regarded a major policy lever to combat social inequalities in early life. Yet, it was shown that inequality in the use of childcare services is the norm rather than the exception in European and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. As a result, social inequalities between disadvantaged and advantaged children are likely to be reinforced instead of being narrowed. The aim of this article is to conduct a macro-level analysis exploring which welfare state characteristics are associated with inequality in childcare use. We find that government involvement in the availability, affordability and quality of service provision is related to lower levels of inequality in childcare use. The results also suggest an impact of labour market opportunities and parental leave schemes. The findings contribute to a proper understanding of the institutional mechanisms underlying inequality in childcare service use.

show abstract

Section: Universalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining patterns of inequality in childcare service use across 31 developed economies: A welfare state perspective

Lancker

Ghysels

2016

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the different employment scenarios (1.B, 1.C, 1.D and 2.B), we do not take into account potential labour demand effects. This means that we assume that additional labour supply of mothers translates into additional employment, which is a standard assumption in the literature (Vandelannoote et al, 2015), and provides an optimistic benchmark for the effects of different policies on poverty reduction and public budget consequences.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 4. In practice, expanding formal subsidized childcare will probably not only affect current non-users. It may also lead to an increase in the amount of hours of childcare by current users of formal subsidized childcare or it may cause a shift from the often more expensive non-subsidized childcare to the cheaper subsidized alternative (see, for example, Del Boca, 2015 and Vandelannoote et al, 2015). These effects, however, fall outside the scope of this analysis, as it would require a joint labour supply–childcare model, which combines both the availability of childcare services and household preferences (Figari and Narazani, 2017).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Investing in subsidized childcare to reduce poverty

Hufkens

Figari

Vandelannoote

et al. 2019

Journal of European Social Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Expanding childcare is often considered as a suitable way to enhance employment opportunities for mothers with young children as well as to reduce child poverty. In this study, the authors critically investigate this assertion by simulating a set of scenarios of increasing subsidized childcare slots and mothers’ employment. For a variety of European welfare states, the impact on poverty and on the government’s budget is estimated using the European microsimulation model EUROMOD. The findings suggest that to achieve significant poverty reductions among young children, both additional childcare slots and increased mothers’ employment should be well targeted. The expenditures for additional childcare slots can to a large extent be recovered by the government receipts generated by the additional employment; however, there appears to be a trade-off between the extra revenue that can be generated and the extent of poverty reduction.

show abstract

“…The more recent literature explicitly incorporates these quantity effects, i.e. rationing of child care availability (Wrohlich 2004;Del Boca and Vuri 2007;Vandelannoote et al 2015). It demonstrates that the availability of child care matters more than its price -estimated own-price elasticities of female labor supply are usually lower when there is rationing.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Less Work, More Labor: School Closures and Work Hours During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Austria

Hanzl,

Rehm

2023

Feminist Economics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent increase in caregiving demands threaten to reverse decades of progress in integrating women into the labor market. This paper explores the gendered impact of school and day care closures on paid work hours during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria. We use data from the Austrian Corona Panel Project (ACPP), which covers the period from March 2020 to March 2021, augmented by unique data on school closures for under 14-year olds, as well as data on school and workplace closures from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OCGRT) data base in order to study the differential adjustments in work hours by gender and parental status over the course of the pandemic. Austria is a particularly interesting case for investigating the links between school closures and the labor supply, since school closures constituted one of the main pillars of COVID-19 pandemic policies, and these in turn were highly volatile. Descriptive data show that both women and men severely cut their working time especially in the first months of the pandemic in spring 2020. However, after work hours stabilized around July 2020, mothers reduced work hours more than fathers in periods with mandatory school closures. Controlling for socio-economic as well as work time variables, an OLS model shows that mothers reduced their work time on top of being female and a parent.A fixed-effects model indicates that women in general reduced their working hours more than men during school closures. This effect is predominantly driven by mothers, whose weekly work hours fell by an economically and statistically significant 22 percent on average, or approximately 5.8 hours, when schools were closed. In contrast, we cannot confirm a statistically significant change in work hours for fathers.Since we also find an effect of school closures on the work time of childless women and men, the variable may in fact capture indirect policy effects and thus represent the tightness of COVID-19 measures. This hypothesis is confirmed by a robustness check: School closures for over 14 year-olds now only affect childless individuals, whereas school closures for under 14 year-olds mainly affect their mothers. The results are robust to model choice. Finally, a logit model for the labor force participation shows robust gender and parental effects, but fails to confirm the effect of school closures. This may be due to the pandemic policy in Austria, which was aimed at maintaining employment mainly through short-time work. These findings suggest that (post-) pandemic policy should focus on counteracting this potential weaker labor market attachment of mothers, in particular by restoring safe and reliable school service.

show abstract

Maternal employment: the impact of triple rationing in childcare

Cited by 12 publications

References 33 publications

Explaining patterns of inequality in childcare service use across 31 developed economies: A welfare state perspective

Explaining patterns of inequality in childcare service use across 31 developed economies: A welfare state perspective

Investing in subsidized childcare to reduce poverty

Less Work, More Labor: School Closures and Work Hours During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Austria

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About