The impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. child care market: Evidence from stay-at-home orders

Umair Ali (), Chris M. Herbst and Christos Makridis

Economics of Education Review, 2021, vol. 82, issue C

Abstract: Stay-at-home orders (SAHOs) were implemented in most U.S. states to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. This paper quantifies the impact of these containment policies on a measure of the supply of child care. The supply of such services may be particularly vulnerable to a SAHO-type policy shock, given that many providers are liquidity-constrained. Using plausibly exogenous variation from the staggered adoption of SAHOs across states, we find that online job postings for early care and education teachers declined by 16% after enactment. This effect is driven exclusively by private-sector services. Indeed, hiring by public programs like Head Start and pre-kindergarten has not been influenced by SAHOs. We also find that ECE job postings increased dramatically after SAHOs were lifted, although the number of such postings remains 4% lower than that during the pre-pandemic period. There is little evidence that child care search behavior among households was altered by SAHOs. Because forced supply-side changes appear to be at play, our results suggest that households may not be well-equipped to insure against the rapid transition to the production of child care. We discuss the implications of these results for child development and parental employment decisions.

Keywords: Child care; Coronavirus; COVID-19; Early care and education; Stay-at-Home Orders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H75 I28 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Working Paper: The Impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. Child Care Market: Evidence from Stay-At-Home Orders (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:82:y:2021:i:c:s0272775721000170

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2021.102094

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