IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bfi/wpaper/2020-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Childcare Obligations Will Constrain Many Workers When Reopening the US Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan I. Dingel

    (University of Chicago - Booth School of Business, CEPR and NBER)

  • Christina Patterson

    (Northwestern University and NBER)

  • Joseph Vavra

    (University of Chicago - Booth School of Business)

Abstract

Most states and cities in the U.S. have shut all non-essential businesses in response to COVID-19. In this note, we argue that as policies are developed to “re-open†the economy and send people back to work, strategies for childcare arrangements, such as re-opening schools and daycares, will be important. Substantial fractions of the U.S. labor force have children at home and will likely face obstacles to returning to work if childcare options remain closed. Younger workers, who might be able to return to work earlier to the extent that they are less susceptible to the virus, are also more likely to require childcare arrangements in order to return to work. Using 2018 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, we calculate the share of employed households who are affected by childcare constraints.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan I. Dingel & Christina Patterson & Joseph Vavra, 2020. "Childcare Obligations Will Constrain Many Workers When Reopening the US Economy," Working Papers 2020-46, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bfi:wpaper:2020-46
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.bfi.uchicago.edu/RePEc/pdfs/BFI_WP_202046.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Titan Alon & Matthias Doepke & Jane Olmstead-Rumsey, 2020. "This Time It's Different: The Role of Women's Employment in a Pandemic Recession," Working Papers 2020-057, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    2. Tomaz Cajner & Andrew Figura & Brendan M. Price & David Ratner & Alison E. Weingarden, 2020. "Reconciling Unemployment Claims with Job Losses in the First Months of the COVID-19 Crisis," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2020-055, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola & Kuhn, Moritz & Tertilt, Michèle, 2020. "The Short-Run Macro Implications of School and Child-Care Closures," IZA Discussion Papers 13353, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Ali, Umair & Herbst, Chris M. & Makridis, Christos A., 2021. "The impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. child care market: Evidence from stay-at-home orders," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    5. Cecilia Obeng & Salome Amissah-Essel & Frederica Jackson & Emmanuel Obeng-Gyasi, 2022. "Preschool Environment: Teacher Experiences during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ghana," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(12), pages 1-13, June.
    6. Laura Montenovo & Xuan Jiang & Felipe Lozano Rojas & Ian M. Schmutte & Kosali I. Simon & Bruce A. Weinberg & Coady Wing, 2020. "Determinants of Disparities in Covid-19 Job Losses," NBER Working Papers 27132, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Annette Alstadsæter & Bernt Bratsberg & Gaute Eielsen & Wojciech Kopczuk & Simen Markussen & Oddbjorn Raaum & Knut Røed, 2020. "The First Weeks of the Coronavirus Crisis: Who Got Hit, When and Why? Evidence from Norway," NBER Working Papers 27131, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Jason Furman & Melissa S. Kearney & Wilson Powell III, 2021. "The role of childcare challenges in the US jobs market recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic," Working Paper Series WP21-8, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    9. Barkowski, Scott & McLaughlin, Joanne Song & Dai, Yinlin, 2020. "Young Children and Parents' Labor Supply during COVID-19," MPRA Paper 102107, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 27 Jul 2020.

    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:bfi:wpaper:2020-46. 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: Toni Shears (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mfichus.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.