To Work or Not to Work? Child Development and Maternal Labor Supply

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Frijters, Paul; Johnston, David W.; Shah, Manisha; Shields, Michael A.
• 署名单位: University of Melbourne; Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.1.3.97
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 97-110
• 关键词: handedness; HEALTH; disability; time

摘要

We estimate the effect of early child development on maternal labor force participation. Mothers of poorly developing children may remain at home to care for their children. Alternatively, mothers may enter the labor force to pay for additional educational and health resources. Which action dominates is the empirical question we answer in this paper. We control for the potential endogeneity of child development by using an instrumental variables approach, uniquely exploiting exogenous variation in child development associated with child handedness. We find that a one unit increase in poor child development decreases maternal labor force participation by approximately 10 percentage points. (JEL J13, J16, J22)