explaining smallholder maize marketing in southern and eastern africa the roles of market access technology and household resource endowments research on household food grain sales behavior in developing countries has tended to focus on the roles of market access and prices to explain why many rural households do not sell staple crops though recent literature suggests that low household asset endowments may also be key constraints we use econometric analysis of panel data from smallholders in kenya mozambique and zambia to inform the design of public investments that will enable smallholders to increase their maize sales results show that investments that raise farm level productivity and land access are an essential complement to investments that improve market access

evaluating the effects of childcare policies on children s cognitive development and maternal labor supply to explore the role of childcare policies in the development of early cognitive skills this paper jointly estimates a cognitive achievement production function and a dynamic discrete choice model of maternal labor supply and childcare decisions using counter actuals from the model i investigate how the designs of two childcare programs head start and childcare subsidies affect the formation of cognitive skills through maternal work and childcare decisions the results suggest large impacts on cognitive skills from expanding head start to current noneligibles and negligible impacts of subsidies on cognitive skills of current eligibles abstract from author

maternal labor supply and the availability of public pre k evidence from the introduction of prekindergarten into american public schools in the 1980s and 1990s many states began to provide funding for prekindergarten programs for the first time this paper takes advantage of the staggered timing in program funding to investigate the effect that increased availability of prekindergarten programs has on the labor supply of mothers with four year olds i find that mothers with a four year old and no younger children were significantly more likely to be in the labor force and employed once prekindergarten became available and that these effects were largest for single low educated mothers and married college educated mothers mothers with a four year old and other younger children were also significantly more likely to be in the labor force and employed although these effects were smaller in magnitude and not significant for specific subpopulations

the link between ability and specialization an explanation for observed correlations between wages and mobility rates wage levels and turnover rates are negatively correlated across types of employment and this fact is often interpreted as evidence that high wage jobs are rationed a simple training model illustrates however that this correlation may arise because able workers have an incentive to choose highly specialized jobs in any job the most able workers possess the most valuable stocks of specific skills and therefore face the highest mobility costs thus able workers may have a comparative advantage in specialized employments data from the national longitudinal survey of youth provide an opportunity to evaluate the merits of the training model developed here data on worker training and mobility provide support for several implications of the model the model also provides new ways to interpret existing results in the literature on interindustry wage differentials

money for nothing universal child care and maternal employment abstract the strong correlation between child care and maternal employment rates has led previous research to conclude that affordable and readily available child care is a driving force both of cross country differences in maternal employment and of its rapid growth over the last decades we analyze a staged expansion of subsidized child care in norway our precise and robust difference in differences estimates reveal that there is little if any causal effect of subsidized child care on maternal employment despite a strong correlation instead of increasing mothers labor supply the new subsidized child care mostly crowds out informal child care arrangements suggesting a significant net cost of the child care subsidies

the supply of child care labor this article presents estimates of the elasticity of supply of labor to child care this parameter is an important determinant of the effects of child care subsidies and regulations on the cost of child care using data from the current population survey there is evidence of an elasticity in the range of 1 2 1 9 this implies that the majority of the benefits of child care subsidies accrue to consumers of child care it is also consistent with the fact that child care workers wages remained flat in real terms in recent years despite rapid growth in the demand for child care

a comparison of the labor supply findings from the four negative income tax experiments between 1968 and 1982 the united states federal government sponsored four negative income tax experiments this paper provides a set of consensus estimates of the labor supply responses to these experiments it is found that despite the wide range of treatments and evaluation methodologies the results are remarkably consistent on average husbands reduced labor supply by about the equivalent of two weeks of full time employment wives and single female heads reduced labor supply by about the equivalent of three weeks of full time employment youth reduced labor supply by about the equivalent of four weeks of full time employment estimated income and substitution effects are quite similar to those obtained from nonexperimental studies

women s labour force participation and child care in romania abstract this paper models household demand for childcare and mothers labour force participation in romania the model estimates the effects of the price of childcare mothers wages and household characteristics on household behaviour with respect to childcare and maternal employment we find that both the maternal decision to become employed and the decision to use out of home care are sensitive to the price of childcare a decrease in the price of care can increase the number of working mothers and thus can reduce poverty in some households we also find that the potential market wage of the mother has a significant positive effect on the decision to purchase market care and on the decision to engage in paid employment the level of household non wage income has little effect on maternal employment and on the demand for childcare

maquiladoras and market mamas women s work and childcare in guatemala city and accra abstract this paper analyses work childcare and earnings of mothers in the slums of guatemala city and accra similar factors affect decisions to work and to use formal daycare but the importance of childcare varies with the role of the formal labour sector in guatemala where formal sector work is important higher prices for informal care increase formal daycare use however daycare prices and proximity to daycare centers do not significantly affect earnings in guatemala city and accra respectively providing formal daycare may be more important to mothers decision to work in cities where formal sector work dominates

the impact of child care costs on the labour supply of married mothers evidence from canada this paper provides estimates for canada of the impact of childcare costs on the labor supply of married mothers this is done by linking two microdata sources the 1988 canadian national child care survey and the 1988 labour market activity survey the key results show that the market wage and childcare costs have respectively a significant positive and negative impact on both hours of work and the labor force participation decision by married mothers the childcare cost elasticities for labor force participation and hours of work are reported to be 0 38 and 0 32 respectively

a theory of quits and layoffs with efficient turnover this paper answers the efficient turnover literature s long silence regarding the quit layoff distinction treating quits as worker initiated separations and layoffs as firm initiated separations i establish that the existence of layoffs is compatible with optimizing workers and firms forming and dissolving employment matches to exploit all the gains from trade the efficient turnover approach is shown to be consistent with many empirical regularities that distinguish quits from layoffs structural implications of the model are tested on data from the psid

the effect of child care costs on married women s labor force participation the effect of child care costs on the probability that married women with children will participate in the labor market is examined child care costs are estimated using a generalized tobit specification corrected for selection estimates of a structural probit model of labor force participation provide evidence to support the prediction that increased child care costs lower the probability of participation it is also shown that the lower rate of labor force participation among mothers of preschoolers is entirely the result of the higher child care costs faced by these women and endogeneity of the number of young children in the participation equation copyright 1992 by mit press

child care costs as a barrier to employment for single and married mothers because women typically serve as primary care providers for their children female labor force participation behavior is likely to be affected significantly by the costs associated with replacing maternal care with nonmaternal care while some evidence of this phenomenon exists in the economics literature discrepancies across studies make it difficult to provide conclusive evidence of the employment effects of these child care costs this paper uses an improved sipp survey design to present new evidence regarding the degree to which child care prices impede mothers employment behavior with additional evidence of the difference in these elasticities across marital status empirical technique and equation specification this permits linking this paper to the existing evidence drawing the conclusion that child care prices impede mothers employment behavior significantly with single mothers exhibiting less responsiveness in their labor force participation behavior to child care price changes than marri

an analysis of women s return to work decisions following first birth women s labor force participation has increased sharply over the last two decades particularly for married women with young children this suggests women are spending less time out of the labor force for child bearing and rearing using the detailed information available in the nlsy i explore women s decisions to return to work within one year of their first child s birth focusing on the effect of child care costs consistent with economic theory women facing lower child care costs are more likely to return to work as are women with higher potential wages and lower family income from other sources jel j0

child care subsidies quality of care and the labor supply of low income single mothers the authors examine the effects of child care subsidies on the labor supply decisions of low income mothers and o n the quality of care their children receive using newly gathered data on two programs that subsidize the child care expenditures of families in kentucky they find that single mothers who receive child care subsidies are more likely to be employed and are generally more satisfied with the care their children receive but subsidies have little effect on hours worked copyright 1992 by mit press

an up to date joint labor supply and child care choice model abstract norwegian parents of preschool children base their care choices on a completely different choice set from their predecessor now there is essentially only one type of nonparental care center based care and on the parental side fathers take a more pivotal role in early childhood care in the present paper we develop and estimate a joint labor supply and child care choice model that takes account of these new characteristics on the assumption that this model points to current and future modeling directions for several other economies too estimations suggest that the average wage elasticity for mothers is 0 25 0 30

the sensitivity of an empirical model of married women s hours of work to economic and statistical assumptions this study undertakes a systematic analysis of several theoretic and statistical assumption s used in many empirical models of female labor supply using a singl e data set psid 1975 labor supply data the author is able to replic ate most of the range of estimated income and substitution effects fo und in previous studies in this field he undertakes extensive specif ication tests and finds that most of this range should be rejected du e to statistical and model misspecifications the two most important assumptions appear to be the tobit assumption used to control for sel f selection into the labor force and exogeneity assumptions on the wi fe s wage rate and her labor market experience copyright 1987 by the econometric society

employment of new mothers and child care choice differences by children s age working women frequently withdraw from the formal labor market for a period of time following their 1st birth while more than 1 3 of these mothers return to work within 3 months 1 2 remain out of formal employment 2 years after giving birth this paper examines the determinants of womens return to the labor market within 2 years of childbirth and the type of child care women choose employing data from the national longitudinal survey of youth the study found economic incentives to have powerful effects upon mothers work behavior despite cultural norms which may encourage mothers to care for their very young children mothers wages and other family income were important determinants the relationship between child care costs and work and child care choice change as children age with mothers being most sensitive to the psychic and financial costs of care in the months immediately following childbirth specifically the presence of mothers personal wages relates positively to early return to work and higher family income delays return to work greater child care tax credits increase the return to work within 3 months yet have little effect on later labor supply neither wages income nor tax credits significantly affected child care choice overall financial variables had less impact on type of child care than on the decision to work

in the right place at the wrong time the role of firms and luck in young workers careers we examine administrative data on young german workers and their employers to study the long term effects of an early career job loss to account for nonrandom sorting of workers into firms with different turnover rates and for selective job mobility we use changes over time in firm and age specific labor demand as an instrument for displacement we find that wage losses of young job losers are initially 15 percent but drop to zero within five years only workers leaving very large establishments suffer persistent losses a comparison of estimators implies that initial sorting negative selection and voluntary job mobility biases ordinary least squares estimates toward finding permanent negative effects of early displacements

dynamic hours of work functions for husbands wives and single females hours of work equations are derived from the constrained maximization of a utility function that is not separable over time and that varies with a household s demographic structure these equations are fitted to observations on wage rates nonlabor income and other variables for husbands wives and unmarried women the dependence of each household s current work and consumption behavior upon its work and consumption behavior in the past is examined closely and different interpretations of the relationship are confronted with the data

childcare subsidies wages and employment of single mothers this paper develops and estimates a model for the choice of part time and full time employment and the decision to pay for childcare among single mothers the results indicate that a lower childcare price and a higher full time wage rate both lead to an increase in overall employment and the use of paid childcare the part time wage effects are found to be too small to have significant behavioral implications an analysis of cost effectiveness indicates that the additional hours of work generated per dollar of government expenditure is larger for a childcare subsidy than a wage subsidy

marital status and full time part time work status in child care choices using recent sipp data this study estimates two econometric models to study the differences in the effect of child care costs on employment status and differences in the mode of child care used controlling for employment status for both married and single women full time employment is more elastic with respect to changes in the price of child care than part time employment and employment elasticities are larger for single than married mothers in the model of child care modal choice we find that an increased probability of full time employment is associated with an increase in the use of centre care for both married and single mothers and that price elasticities of modal choice are larger for single than married mothers

tax credits labor supply and child care we explore the impact of the child care tax credit in the u s income tax system on the labor supply decisions of married women with young children by incorporating the cost of child care into a st

part time versus full time work and child care costs evidence for married mothers this paper contributes to the analysis of female labour supply by accounting for both child care costs and differences in part time and full time work an ordered probit model is used to examine the impact of child care costs on the work status of married mothers data are drawn from the canadian national child care survey and the labour market activity survey the results from this paper show the degree to which child care subsidies may have differential impacts on part time and full time work decisions by mothers the child care cost elasticities for part time and full time employment are reported to be 0 21 and 0 71 respectively

the demand for quality in child care we estimate a model of demand for quality related attributes of child care group size staff child ratio and provider training the model is estimated jointly with equations for mode expenditure on and hours of care and the mother s labor supply the results show that a lower price of child care in a particular mode leads to substitution toward that mode and an increase in the use of paid child care a decrease in the price of care causes an increase in hours of care demanded and a decrease in the demand for qualityrelated attributes income effects on demand for quality are small

child care costs and the employment decision of women canadian evidence the authors estimate the joint decision for women with preschool children to engage in paid employment and to purchase market forms of child care the results confirm those found in most u s studies indicating that child care costs exert a significant negative effect on the labor supply of women with children and on their decision to purchase child care as well the expected wage of the mother exerts a significant positive impact on both the decision to purchase market forms of child care and the decision to engage in paid unemployment

employment and child care choices in canada and the united states in this paper we examine employment and child care choices of two parent families with young children in the united states and canada using a pooled data set based on recent national surveys in each country we find that the employment and child care choices of canadian families are similar to those of u s families estimates of a model of employment and child care choices indicate significant effects of child care subsidies child care prices and wage rates on employment and child care choices however none of these factors helps to explain the differences in employment and child care choices between the two countries ce memoire examine le choix de l emploi et du soin des enfants dans les familles ou il y deux parents aux etats unis et au canada en utilisant des donnees d etudes recentes dans les deux pays il appert que les choix des familles canadiennes sont semblables a ceux des familles americaines les calibrations d un modele de ces choix montrent les effets significatifs des subventions au soin des enfants du prix des soins des enfants et des taux de salaires sur ces choix cependant aucun de ces facteurs n explique les diffrences dans les patterns de choix entre les deux pays

preschoolers enrolled and mothers at work the effects of universal prekindergarten three states recently introduced universal prekindergarten programs offering free preschool to all age eligible children policy makers in many other states are promoting similar programs using restricted access data from the census together with birthday based eligibility cutoffs i employ a regression discontinuity framework to estimate the effects of universal pre k availability on overall preschool enrollment and maternal labor supply universal pre k availability increases statewide preschool enrollment by about 14 but has little effect on the labor supply of most women

a structural model of child care and the labor supply of married women this article empirically examines married women s labor supply and child care expenditures the article uses winter 1984 85 data from the survey of income and program participation to estimate a fu

child care costs and family labor supply this paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of child care costs on family labor supply and the demand for market child care the model is a framework for cross section estimation of the effects of child care costs on labor supply and child care use it applies to households having young children requiring continuous care and in which both the mother and 1 other potential child care provider are present the 3 potential sources of child care are the mother the potential informal provider and the market using data from the 1980 baseline household survey of the employment opportunity pilot projects this empirical analysis uses a subsample of 6170 households in which there is a married woman under age 45 with her spouse present at the time of the survey at least 1 child under age 14 and nonmissing data on key variables results show that 1 higher market child care costs discourage women from working even when an informal source of care is available indicating that such informal care is an imperfect substitute for market care 2 a higher wage rate for the mother encourages her to work thus a higher wage rate increases the probability of using market child care 3 the number of children requiring care has a negative impact on the probability of the women working with the largest impact caused by younger children 4 nonwage income has a negative impact on the probability of the woman working and 5 black women are more likely to work than whites and are statistically more likely than whites to use market child care if they do work this family labor supply model predicts that the cost of market child care will affect household decisions on labor supply and child care use estimates of a qualitative choice model provide strong confirmation that child care costs affect such decisions the responsiveness of the labor supply of mothers to child care costs demonstrated in this study indicate that such subsidies do have their intended effect of encouraging labor supply the fact that a large proportion of current child care subsidies benefit primarily middle and upper income families via the income tax credit suggests that the labor supply effets of such subsidies may in practice be stronger for less needy families than for low income families employer subsidized child care may become an increasingly popular tool for attracting mothers into the labor force

a structural model of labor supply and child care demand this paper specifies and estimates a structural model in which the decision to purchase market child care and the quality purchased is made simultaneously with the employment decision of the mother separate analyses are performed for married mothers and single mothers the structural estimates are used to simulate the effects and costs of changes in the federal child care tax credit the simulations indicate that a refundable child care tax credit would distribute child care benefits more equally across the population by increasing the shares of subsidies received by low income families and would induce a considerable increase in expenditures on market child care labor supply also increases but by considerably less than child care expenditures a surprising result is that despite large increases in child care

public schooling for young children and maternal labor supply as policy makers have sought to reduce the welfare rolls by increasing labor supply among single mothers much attention has been given to the possible role of expanded child care subsidies including direct provision of public preschool at the same time public interest in child care subsidies for two parent households is high for example former vice president gore not long ago proposed to make high quality pre school fully available to every family for every child in every community in america albert gore 1999 in this paper i use 1980 census data to estimate the effect of public school enrollment for a woman s five year old on measures of labor supply and public assistance receipt this approach has two advantages first i am able to estimate the effect of a large implicit child care subsidy 1 second because public kindergarten is universally available to all age eligible children where it is provided selection problems related to means testing do not arise a difficulty with public school enrollment arises because parents may choose to hold their children back a year or enroll them in private school i deal with this issue by using five yearold s quarter of birth qob variables as instruments for public school enrollment status this strategy works because parents ability to enroll a child in public kindergarten in the academic year when the child turns five typically depends on the calendar date of the child s birth 2 in most states children born in the second quarter april 1 june 30 of 1974 will have been eligible to start kindergarten in the fall of 1979 while children born in the first quarter january 1march 31 of 1975 generally will not eligibility for children born between july 1 and december 31 1974 depends on the rules where they live 3

household childcare choices and women s work behavior in russia the author models mothers participation in the labor force their working hours and household demand for childcare in russia the model estimates the effects of the price of childcare mothers wages and household income on household behavior and well being the theoretical model yields several predictions to test these reduced form equations of the discrete and continuous household choices are estimated jointly using the method of semi parametric full information maximum likelihood this method controls for the correlation of error terms across outcomes and the correlation of error terms that can result when panel data are used the results of this analysis indicate that the extent to which mothers participate in the labor force and for how many hours depends on the costs of childcare and on what level of hourly wage is available to them and to other members of the household the author s simulations show that family allowances intended to reduce poverty do not significantly affect the household choice of childcare arrangements replacing family allowances with childcare subsidies might have a strong positive effect on women s participation in the labor force and thus could be effective in reducing poverty