Money for nothing? Universal child care and maternal employment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Havnes, Tarjei; Mogstad, Magne
• 署名单位: University of Oslo; Statistics Norway
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.05.016
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 1455-1465
• 关键词: Universal child care; Child care subsidies; maternal employment

摘要

The strong correlation between child care and maternal employment rates has led previous research to conclude that affordable and readily available child care is a driving force both of cross-country differences in maternal employment and of its rapid growth over the last decades. We analyze a staged expansion of subsidized child care in Norway. Our precise and robust difference-in-differences estimates reveal that there is little, if any, causal effect of subsidized child care on maternal employment, despite a strong correlation. Instead of increasing mothers' labor supply, the new subsidized child care mostly crowds out informal child care arrangements, suggesting a significant net cost of the child care subsidies. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.