Early Child Care, Maternal Labor Supply, and Gender Equality:A Randomized Controlled Trial*

Henning Hermes (hermes@dice.hhu.de), Marina Krauss (marina.krauss@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de), Philipp Lergetporer (philipp.lergetporer@tum.de), Frauke Peter (peter@dzhw.eu) and Simon Wiederhold (simon.wiederhold@ku.de)
Additional contact information
Henning Hermes: University of Duesseldorf, Institute for Competition Economics, https://www.henninghermes.com/
Marina Krauss: University of Augsburg, Department of Economics, https://www.uni-augsburg.de/de/fakultaet/wiwi/prof/vwl/nuscheler/team/marina-krauss/
Philipp Lergetporer: Technical University of Munich, School of Management, https://sites.google.com/lergetporer.at/philipplergetporereconomics/home
Frauke Peter: Deutsches Zentrum fuer Hochschul- und Wissenschaftsforschung, https://www.dzhw.eu/gmbh/mitarbeiter?m_id=861
Simon Wiederhold: University of Ingolstadt, D-85049 Ingolstadt

No 345, Discussion Paper Series from Universitaet Augsburg, Institute for Economics

Abstract: We provide experimental evidence that enabling access to universal early child care increases maternallabor supply and promotes gender equality among families with lower socioeconomic status (SES). Ourintervention offers information and customized help with child care applications, leading to a boost inchild care enrollment among lower-SES families. 18 months after the intervention, we find substantialincreases in maternal full-time employment (+160%), maternal earnings (+22%), and household income(+10%). Intriguingly, the positive employment effects are not only driven by extended hours at child carecenters, but also by an increase in care hours by fathers. Gender equality also benefits more broadly frombetter access to child care: The treatment improves a gender equality index that combines informationon intra-household division of working hours, care hours, and earnings by 40% of a standard deviation,with significant increases in each dimension. For higher-SES families, we consistently observe negligible,insignificant treatment effects.

Keywords: Child care; maternal employment; gender equality; randomized controlled trial (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J13 J18 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://opus.bibliothek.uni-augsburg.de/opus4/files/113948/113948.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aug:augsbe:345

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series from Universitaet Augsburg, Institute for Economics Universitaetsstrasse 16, D-86159 Augsburg, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr. Simone Raab-Kratzmeier (simone.raab@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de).