Grandparents' Childcare and Female Labor Force Participation

Josefina Posadas () and Marian Vidal-Fernandez ()
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Josefina Posadas: World Bank

No 6398, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In the U.S., grandparents look after one in five preschool children of employed women. Does this source of informal childcare increase female labor force participation and if so, up to what extent? The main challenge to answer this question is that a positive relationship between grandparents’ childcare and female labor force participation might not be causal. We use the maternal grandmother’s death as an instrument of grandparents’ childcare to measure the effect of grandparents’ childcare on maternal labor force participation (MLFP). We compare OLS and IV estimates and find that grandparents’ childcare increases MLFP by 15 percentage points on average. We argue that most of the effect is driven by families from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Keywords: childcare; maternal labor force participation; grandparents; NLSY (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I3 J2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2012-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Published - published in: IZA Journal of Labor Policy, 2013, 2:14

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