 Secure communities as immigration enforcement: How secure is the child care market?Umair Ali, Jessica H. Brown and Chris M. Herbst Journal of Public Economics, 2024, vol. 233, issue C Abstract: Immigrants comprise nearly 20% of the child care workforce in the U.S. This paper studies the impact of a major immigration enforcement policy, Secure Communities (SC), on the structure and functioning of the child care market. Relying on the staggered introduction of SC across counties between 2008 and 2014, we find that the program reduced children’s participation in center-based child care programs. The estimated reductions are substantially larger among advantaged children and in jurisdictions with a greater fraction of undocumented individuals. We also find that SC reduced the equilibrium supply and wages of immigrant and native workers in the center-based sector as well as the number of center-based facilities. There is no compensating increase in the home-based or private household sectors. Our findings suggest that immigrants and natives are likely to be complements in child care service production. Keywords: Child care; Maternal employment; Immigration; Secure Communities (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:233:y:2024:i:c:s0047272724000379 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105101 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier |
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