Women’s Labor Force Participation and Childcare Choices in Urban China during the Economic Transition (original) (raw)
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China Population and Development Studies, 2019
This paper investigates the effects of grandparent-provided childcare and the access to daycare services on the labor force participation of mothers with children under 7 years old in urban China. Using two-stage residual inclusion method, the analysis finds that grandparent-provided childcare and the access to daycare services both have strong positive effects on maternal labor force participation (MLFP). Specifically, having grandparent-provided childcare increases MLFP by 38-43%, whereas having access to daycare services increases MLFP by 24-29%. The analysis also finds that having a healthy grandmother is a significant determinant in whether grandparent-provided childcare is utilized and that the demand for grandparent-provided childcare is higher in localities in which daycare services for children under 3 years old are more expensive. These results indicate that grandparents, particularly grandmothers, play an important role in sustaining MLFP, particularly as the supply of publicly funded daycare programs is declining.
Women’s Employment and Child Care Choices in Urban China during the Economic Transition
Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2013
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The Care Economy in Post-Reform China: Feminist Research on Unpaid and Paid Work and Well-Being
Feminist Economics, 2018
As China embarked on the path of economic and social reforms, social provisions from the Maoist era were dismantled, and care responsibilities shifted back from the state to the household. Rural-urban migration, a steep decline in fertility, and increasing longevity have led to changes in the age structure of the population both overall and by region. Using seven different surveys, the eleven contributions in this volume study the distributive consequences of post-reform care policies and the impact of unpaid care responsibilities on women's and men's opportunities and gender inequality. Overall, reduced care services have created care deficits for disadvantaged groups, including low-income rural elderly and children. The shifted care burden has also limited women's ability to participate fully in the market economy and has contributed to rising gender inequalities in labor force participation, off-farm employment, earnings, pensions, and mental health outcomes.
Childcare, mothers' work, and earnings: Findings from the urban slums of Guatemala City [Arabic]
This study investigates the effects of childcare on work and earnings of mothers in the slums of Guatemala City. Recognizing that mother's work behavior may depend on the availability of childcare, the modeling approach allows participation in the labor force and use of formal daycare to be jointly determined. We also investigate whether a mother's "status" within her household (as measured by the value of the assets she brought to her marriage) influences her entry into the labor force. Finally, we explore the impact of childcare prices on a mother's earnings, conditional on her decision to work. The study uses a survey of 1,363 randomly selected mothers (working and nonworking) with preschool children carried out in 1999 by the International Food Policy Research Institute. In this sample, 37 percent of mothers with preschoolers worked for pay in the 30 days before the survey. Mothers were employed in a variety of occupations and sectors and used an assortment of different informal and formal childcare arrangements. Our results indicate that participation in the labor force and use of formal daycare are in fact joint decisions for mothers. Life-cycle and household demographic factors have important effects on both decisions. Maternal education is an important determinant of use of formal daycare, but does not have large effects on whether a mother works for pay or not. Higher household wealth reduces her chances of working. However, the higher the value of assets she brought to her marriage, the more likely she is to be working. Greater travel time from home to formal daycare reduces its use. Controlling for endogeneity of labor market participation and formal daycare use, childcare prices have no impact on maternal earnings. This suggests that policies to increase the availability of formal daycare in poor urban areas have the potential to raise labor force participation rates of mothers in such neighborhoods, but not necessarily their earnings conditional upon their entry into the labor force.
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 2014
This paper investigates new directions in the evolution of Latin American welfare regimes by focusing on the extension of early childhood education and care (ECEC) policies in Argentina and Mexico, particularly in the last decade. Both states have paid increased attention to ECEC policies for several reasons: the failure of firstgeneration structural adjustment reforms to address problems of poverty; women's increased participation in the paid labor force and the adoption of a new investment social paradigm which emphasizes human capital formation. We argue that these factors play out in different ways in the two countries, as a result of different ideologies and political agendas of the governments and their different degrees of openness to the influence of international ideas. When looking at gender dimensions of their welfare regimes, Argentina and Mexico show very similar patterns of gender stratification, and both states display similarities between their policies in the area of early education. In the area of day care, however, Mexico encourages women to work via defamilialization of services, while Argentina reveals preference for low-income mothers to stay at home and work in the informal sector.
Childcare and Women's Labor Participation: Evidence for Latin America and the Caribbean
Reliable and affordable non-parental childcare is intimately related to female participation and other outcomes in the labor market given the conflicting demand for women’s time on both, work and care activities. In terms of policy, public provision and subsidy of childcare services lift some of the time constraints and contribute to help families in the transition through the initial years of parenthood. Both from developed and developing countries, there is evidence that subsidized childcare increases enrollment and this in turn increases the probability for mothers to look for a job or to be employed. This paper summarizes the available evidence specifically discussing characteristics and impact of childcare policies and programs in the Latin American region. Almost all random assignment and quasi-experimental studies show consistent positive effects either on the intensive or extensive margins of female labor supply. We also provide a review of incipient evidence about factors that affect program take-up and demand for childcare services and other informal care arrangements.
Child Care Matters: What Educated Mothers Need Before Entering t he Labor Market
ADVANCES IN BUSINESS RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, 2019
Individuals who succeed in higher education are supposedly skillful with very high employability rates and predictable career outcomes. In parallel with that, recent statistics show increasing number of female graduates in higher institutions in Malaysia. However, comparing regional estimates of female participation rates in the labor market, Malaysian women have a relatively low participation in labor market for decades. Among the educated women surveyed in 2017, 42 percent were outside the labor force while the married ones said they did not work to look after their children. In this qualitative study, nine educated mothers and three experts in the field were interviewed to find the real problems related to child care. The three validated themes were child care costs, availability of child care centers and child care quality. A quality child care center is usually more expensive. Although many qualified centers have been established, not all meet the needs of discerning educated m...
Enrollment in Early Childhood Education and Care in Turkey
This work provides a comprehensive analysis of the demand for childcare and pre-primary education in Turkey, using the data on enrollment collected by the Turkish Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS) in 2013. It offers new evidence on the patterns of enrollment by child’s age and socioeconomic background and how enrollment at different ages depends on a wide range of family characteristics. As such, it provides a unique picture of inequalities in Turkey, as well as new insights for policy implications.
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