Childcare Availability, Household Structure, and Maternal Employment

Yukiko Asai, Ryo Kambayashi (), Atsuko Tanaka and Shintaro Yamaguchi

No 611, Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: We estimate the causal effects of childcare availability on the maternal employment rate using prefecture panel data constructed from the Japanese quinquennial census 1990-2010. We depart from previous contributions by controlling for prefecture fixed effects, without which the estimates can be severely biased upward. We find that the treatment effect is heterogeneous: the employment rate of mothers in nuclear households increases with childcare availability, while that of mothers in three-generation households does not. We apply our estimates to decomposition of the growth of the maternal employment rate from 1990 to 2010. The decomposition indicates that the increase in childcare availability raised the maternal employment rate by about two percentage points. We also find that dissolution of three-generation household lowered the maternal employment rate. This negative effect is more strongly pronounced in small prefectures where the household structure changed dramatically.

Keywords: childcare; female labor supply; maternal employment; nuclear family; three-generation family (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J21 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2014-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/26750/DP611.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Childcare availability, household structure, and maternal employment (2015)
Working Paper: Childcare Availability, Household Structure, and Maternal Employment (2014)
Working Paper: Childcare Availability, Household Structure, and Maternal Employment (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:hituec:611

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