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Child Care and the Employment Behavior of Single and Married Mothers

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  • Jean Kimmel

    (Western Michigan University)

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the cost of child care and the employment behavior of married and single mothers. The data used in this paper are from the 1987 SIPP, the first SIPP panel to utilize an improved probing of child care usage and expenditures. A primary contribution of this paper stems from the use of these improved child care data. A second contribution is to provide a clear comparison between single mothers and married mothers. A third contribution of this paper is its detailed discussion of participation elasticities, with a comparison of elasticities derived from different measures of the price of child care. This permits a meaningful comparison between the different child care price elasticities reported by different child care researchers in recent years. The paper's primary estimating equations examine the impact of changes in the market wage and the hourly price of child care on employment and hours of paid child care. The most fundamental result described in this paper is that increases in the market wage significantly increase the probability of labor force participation for married and single mothers, while increases in the price of care reduce the probability of labor force participation.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean Kimmel, 1992. "Child Care and the Employment Behavior of Single and Married Mothers," Upjohn Working Papers 93-14, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:upj:weupjo:93-14
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    File URL: http://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1026&context=up_workingpapers
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Connelly, Rachel, 1992. "The Effect of Child Care Costs on Married Women's Labor Force Participation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(1), pages 83-90, February.
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    Cited by:

    1. Anna Lovász & Ágnes Szabó-Morvai, 2019. "Childcare availability and maternal labor supply in a setting of high potential impact," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(6), pages 2127-2165, June.
    2. S.P. Premaratne, 2011. "Household Labour Supply in Sri Lanka for Urban Young Couple with Pre-school Children," South Asia Economic Journal, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, vol. 12(2), pages 323-338, September.
    3. Matthias Staat & Gerhard Wagenhals, 1996. "Lone mothers: A review," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 9(2), pages 131-140, June.
    4. Barrow, Lisa, 1999. "An Analysis of Women's Return-to-Work Decisions following First Birth," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 37(3), pages 432-451, July.
    5. Anna Lovasz & Agnes Szabo-Morvai, 2013. "Does Childcare Matter for Maternal Labor Supply? Pushing the limits of the Regression Discontinuity Framework," Budapest Working Papers on the Labour Market 1313, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    6. Robert J. Lemke & Ann Dryden Witte & Magaly Queralt & Robert Witt, 2000. "Child Care and the Welfare to Work Transition," NBER Working Papers 7583, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Agnes Szabo-Morvai & Anna Lovasz, 2017. "Childcare and Maternal Labor Supply – a Cross-Country Analysis of Quasi-Experimental Estimates from 7 Countries," Budapest Working Papers on the Labour Market 1703, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    8. Sandra L. Hofferth & Duncan D. Chaplin & Douglas A. Wissoker & Philip K. Robins, 1996. "Choice Characteristics And Parents' Child-Care Decisions," Rationality and Society, , vol. 8(4), pages 453-495, November.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    child; care; employment; mothers; Kimmel;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

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