Taxing Childcare: Effects on Family Labor Supply and Children

Christina Gathmann and Björn Sass

No 438, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: Previous studies report a wide range of estimates for how female labor supply responds to childcare prices. We shed new light on this question using a reform that raised the prices of public daycare. Parents respond by reducing public daycare and increasing childcare at home. Parents also reduce informal childcare indicating that public daycare and informal childcare are complements. Female labor force participation declines and the response ist strongest for single parents and low-income households. The short-run effects on cognitive and non-cognitive skills are mixed, but negative for girls. Spillover effects on older siblings suggest that the policy affects the whole household, not just targeted family members.

Keywords: Childcare; Labor supply; Cognitive skills; Family Policy; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J18 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 : Anh. p.
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.397727.de/diw_sp0438.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Taxing Childcare: Effects on Family Labor Supply and Children (2012)
Working Paper: Taxing Childcare: Effects on Family Labor Supply and Children (2012)
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:diw:diwsop:diw_sp438

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().