Households’ responses to price changes of formal childcare

Leroy Andersland () and Øivind Nilsen
Additional contact information
Leroy Andersland: University of Bergen, Postal: University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway

No 20/2016, Discussion Paper Series in Economics from Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics

Abstract: The current understanding about how households respond to price changes in formal childcare is not extensive. This study examines this response through a 1998 reform in Norway that introduced a money transfer to families who did not send their child to childcare. This cash-for-care reform raised the price of formal childcare relative to its alternatives by about 115% for 1–2 year olds but not 3–5 year olds. Using household surveys conducted before and after the reform the analysis reveals that childcare attendance fell by 13.7 percentage points because of the reform. The results also indicate that the most important alternative to formal childcare is parental care. Furthermore, households of low socioeconomic status are more price sensitive, with the main substitute mode of care for this group being parental/relative care, whereas for high socioeconomic status families the substitutes include day parks and nannies as well as parental care.

Keywords: Public Policy; Cash Incentives; Childcare; Difference-in-Difference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 H31 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2016-10-14
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/112 ... quence=1&isAllowed=y (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:hhs:nhheco:2016_020

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series in Economics from Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics NHH, Department of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Synne Stormoen ().