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Grandmothers and the Gender Gap in the Mexican Labor Market

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  • Talamas Marcos, Miguel Ángel

Abstract

This paper estimates the effect of childcare availability on parents' employment probability using the timing of death of grandmothers--the primary childcare providers in Mexico--as identifying variation. I use a triple-difference to disentangle the effect of coinhabiting grandmothers' deaths due to their impact on childcare from their effects due to alternative mechanisms. Through their impact on childcare availability, grandmothers' deaths reduce mothers' employment rate by 12 percentage points (27 percent) and do not affect fathers' employment rate. The negative effect on mothers' employment is smaller where public daycare is more available, or private daycare or schools are more affordable.

Suggested Citation

  • Talamas Marcos, Miguel Ángel, 2022. "Grandmothers and the Gender Gap in the Mexican Labor Market," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 12151, Inter-American Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:idb:brikps:12151
    DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0004208
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    Cited by:

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    2. Cervini, Maria & Silva, José I., 2023. "Childcare restrictions and gender gap in labor outcomes," MPRA Paper 118957, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Balasubramanian, Pooja & Ibanez, Marcela & Khan, Sarah & Sahoo, Soham, 2024. "Does women's economic empowerment promote human development in low- and middle-income countries? A meta-analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Triple-difference; Motherhood penalty; Childcare; Mexico;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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