The redistributive effects of size-dependent childcare policies

Diego Escobar, Jeanne Lafortune, Loris Rubini and José Tessada

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 2024, vol. 160, issue C

Abstract: Governments often adopt policies to reduce the cost of childcare for working families, but those can distort the allocation of resources. We develop and calibrate a general equilibrium model with firm and household heterogeneity and study the case of Chile, where firms with more than 19 female employees must provide childcare. We find that removing this policy would increase welfare on average by 2.3% of consumption equivalent units over their lifetime. However, the removal would not translate into increases in GDP, in part because of a reduced labor supply. Instead, the main effects of the policy are redistributive, shifting resources away from females towards males. The policy reduces welfare for most females, and these losses are decreasing in income. In particular, low-education single females, who do not rely on a second wage, would gain up to 20% in consumption equivalent units by removing the policy. We propose that alternative childcare financing options would be preferred. Specifically, financing childcare through labor taxes would increase aggregate welfare by over 13%, with the largest gains accruing to single, low-education mothers.

Keywords: Misallocation of resources; Childcare subsidies; Female labor supply; Family economics; Labor force participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D15 E24 E25 E65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:160:y:2024:i:c:s0165188924000101

DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2024.104818

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