IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ausecr/v31y1998i1p47-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring the Impact of Child Care Subsidies on the Incomes of Mothers Returning to Work

Author

Listed:
  • Deborah Schofield
  • Josh Polette

Abstract

The cost of child care is one of the greatest financial barriers faced by mothers returning to work. In recognition of this cost, the federal government provides child care subsidies to assist families to meet the cost of child care. This paper models the use of child care services and the provision of child care subsidies to determine how effective the Australian government child care support programs are in reducing the financial barriers that make returning to work difficult for many mothers. Both childcare assistance and the newer childcare cash rebate are modelled. The impact of these assistance measures is examined for couples and sole parents on different incomes with one or two children in child care. It was found that child care subsidies are highly progressive and make a substantial contribution to vertical equity by offsetting child care costs related to employment. They also contribute to horizontal equity, by providing greater assistance in meeting child care costs for families with more than one child in care, in recognition of their greater need. Sole parents derived the greatest benefit from child care subsidies, particularly those on low incomes working full‐time and with two children in care.

Suggested Citation

  • Deborah Schofield & Josh Polette, 1998. "Measuring the Impact of Child Care Subsidies on the Incomes of Mothers Returning to Work," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 31(1), pages 47-62, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ausecr:v:31:y:1998:i:1:p:47-62
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-8462.00050
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.00050
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-8462.00050?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Deborah Cobb-Clark & Amy Liu & Deborah Mitchell, 1999. "Reassessing the Role of Child Care Costs in the Work and Care Decisions of Australian Families," CEPR Discussion Papers 409, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    2. Rammohan, Anu, 2004. "Child care and female employment decisions: A theoretical note," Working Papers 3, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    3. Anu Rammohan & Stephen Whelan, 2006. "Child Care Costs and the Employment Status of Married Australian Mothers," CEPR Discussion Papers 517, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    4. Stephen Whelan & Anu Rammohan, 2005. "Child Care and Female Decisions," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 8(2), pages 203-225, June.
    5. Elisa‐Rose Birch, 2005. "Studies of the Labour Supply of Australian Women: What Have We Learned?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 81(252), pages 65-84, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ausecr:v:31:y:1998:i:1:p:47-62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mimelau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.