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Public child care and mothers’ career trajectories

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  • Katrin Huber

    (University of Potsdam, CEPA, BSE)

  • Geske Rolvering

    (University of Passau)

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of public child care on mothers’ career trajectories. To this end, we combine county-level data on child care coverage with detailed individual-level information from the German social security records and exploit a set of German reforms leading to a substantial temporal and spatial variation in child care coverage for children under the age of three. We conduct an event study approach that investigates the labor market outcomes of mothers in the years around the birth of their first child. We thereby explore career trajectories, both in terms of quantity and quality of employment. We find that public child care improves maternal labor supply in the years immediately following childbirth. However, the results on quality-related outcomes suggest that the effect of child care provision does not reach far beyond pure employment effects. These results do not change for mothers with different ‘career costs of children’.

Suggested Citation

  • Katrin Huber & Geske Rolvering, 2023. "Public child care and mothers’ career trajectories," CEPA Discussion Papers 64, Center for Economic Policy Analysis.
    • Handle: RePEc:pot:cepadp:64
    DOI: 10.25932/publishup-58731
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    1. Ulrich Glogowsky & Emanuel Hansen & Dominik Sachs & Holger Lüthen, 2024. "The Evolution of Child-Related Gender Inequality in Germany and the Role of Family Policies, 1960-2018," CESifo Working Paper Series 11365, CESifo.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    child care; maternal employment; career costs of children; women’s careers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J08 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics Policies
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

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