Child Care Assistance in the United States and Nonstandard Work Schedules (original) (raw)
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Nonstandard Work Schedules, Child Care Subsidies, and Child Care Arrangements
2006
This paper examines the complexity of low-income mothers' child care arrangements, with attention to nonstandard job schedules and child care subsidies. Data come from the Women's Employment Study, a panel study of low-income mothers. Of interest is whether nonstandard work schedules and child care subsidies are associated with the type and amount of care families' use. Findings demonstrate that net of other factors, respondents who work evenings rely less on formal care, but use a significantly greater number of care hours annually. In addition, net of other factors, subsidy receipt is related to more formal care and a greater number of care hours annually. The robustness of these findings is examined with fixed effects regressions using three waves of WES data.
2007
Work requirements implemented through welfare reform have led to a focus on moving mothers into employment. As a consequence, the labor force participation rates of single mothers have increased dramatically in the last decade, increasing the importance of child care policies. Although numerous studies have examined the impact of child care subsidies in assisting parents to obtain employment, very few have examined the impact of subsidies on maintaining employment. This study sought to determine whether families with a child care subsidy differed from families without a subsidy on three child care-specific variables assumed to affect a mother's ability to maintain employment: child care problems, child care-related work disruptions, and a desire to switch care arrangements. The mediating roles of child care costs and type of care on the relationships between child care subsidies and these variables were also examined. Data for this study come from two samples of low-income single mothers. The first was a study of 40 mothers in a mid-Atlantic county interviewed before and after receiving a child care subsidy. The second was a subsample of 658 mothers from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being study. Data were analyzed via multivariate techniques and path models on both static and dynamic models, including comparing changes by the same parents over time. Receipt of a child care subsidy was found to be a significant predictor of experiencing fewer child care problems and child care-related work disruptions across datasets and using multiple methods. Parents were also less likely to report desiring to switch their care arrangement when they had a child care subsidy compared to when they did not have a subsidy. Finally, the use of formal child care was found to mediate the relationship between child care subsidy status and child care-related work disruptions for parents in one of the samples. Policy and program recommendations for assisting lowincome families balance work and family by minimizing experiences with child carerelated work disruptions are discussed.
Nonstandard Work and Child Care Choices of Married Mothers
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
The focus of this paper is to examine the interplay between nonstandard employment and child care choice decisions of married mothers with young children. We draw on the 1992/93 Survey of Income and Program Participation to estimate two related econometric models of child care choice that include the choice among center, sitter, relative and parental care. First, controlling for the potential endogeneity of the nonstandard work decision, we find that being a nonstandard worker significantly reduces the likelihood of using formal modes of child care such as center and sitter care. In our second model, where we jointly estimate the work status and child care choice decisions of mothers, we find that the standard versus nonstandard work decision is more responsive to the price of child care. Finally, we conclude the paper by discussing potential policy solutions to improve the child care options for mothers with young children working in nonstandard jobs.
This study investigates the relationship between maternal employment and state-to-state differences in childcare cost and mean school day length. Pairing state-level measures with an individual-level sample of prime working-age mothers from the American Time Use Survey (2005–2014; n = 37,993), we assess the multilevel and time-varying effects of childcare costs and school day length on maternal full-time and part-time employment and childcare time. We find mothers’ odds of full-time employment are lower and part-time employment higher in states with expensive childcare and shorter school days. Mothers spend more time caring for children in states where childcare is more expensive and as childcare costs increase. Our results suggest that expensive childcare and short school days are important barriers to maternal employment and, for childcare costs, result in greater investments in childcare time. Politicians engaged in national debates about federal childcare policies should look to existing state childcare structures for policy guidance.
Maintaining Work: The Influence of Child Care Subsidies on Child Care--Related Work Disruptions
Journal of Family Issues, 2011
With the passage of welfare reform, parents' ability to not only obtain, but maintain work has become imperative. The role of child care subsidies in supporting parents' job tenure has received little attention in the literature. This article examines the relationship between receiving a child care subsidy and the likelihood of experiencing a child care-related work disruption using two samples and both cross-sectional and longitudinal regression models. Child care-related work disruptions are found to be less likely among subsidy recipients across samples and methods. Program implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Maintaining Work: The Influence of Child Care Subsidies on Child Care-Related Work
2009
With the passage of welfare reform, parents’ ability to not only obtain, but maintain work has become imperative. The role of child care subsidies in supporting parents’ job tenure has received little attention in the literature. This article examines the relationship between receiving a child care subsidy and the likelihood of experiencing a child care-related work disruption using two samples
2000
With the passage of welfare reform, parents' ability to not only obtain, but maintain work has become imperative. The role of child care subsidies in supporting parents' job tenure has received little attention in the literature. This article examines the relationship between receiving a child care subsidy and the likelihood of experiencing a child care-related work disruption using two samples and both cross-sectional and longitudinal regression models. Child care-related work disruptions are found to be less likely among subsidy recipients across samples and methods. Program implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Child Care Subsidies and Employment Behavior Among Very-Low-Income Populations in Three States
Review of Policy Research, 2006
Using merged administrative data from welfare reform evaluations in three states, we estimate the effects of child care subsidy use on the length of time it takes for a welfare applicant to move into substantial employment. Findings show that the use of a child care subsidy during an unemployed or marginally employed spell of welfare receipt is associated with between a 0.6 and 1.7 quarter (or 11% to 34%) reduction in the time to substantial employment in two of the three state samples. The positive influence of subsidy use on transitions to substantial employment is strongest for those welfare applicants with the lowest earnings who are mixing welfare and work prior to subsidy receipt.
Effects of child-care programs on women's work effort
1974
This research was sponsored by National Science Foundation and Office of Economic Opportunity grants to the National Bureau of Economic Research. I gratefully acknowledge Ralph Shnelvar's skilled programming assistance. Orley Ashenfelter, Charles Betsey, Jacob Mincer, Marc Nerlove, Mel Reder, James Smith, Firtis Welch, and Robert Willis provided useful comments. I thank Elisabeth Parshley for her assistance. I retain full responsibility for all errors in the paper. This paper has not undergone NBER staff review and is not an official publication of NBER, NSF, or OEO. Si36 CHILDCARE PROGRAMS SI37 the conventional assumption that the wage rate is independent of hours of work. The separation of preferences and constraints allows us to estimate labor-supply functions for individuals affected by welfare systems and progressive income taxation. The methodology presented here is similar in spirit to the pioneering work of Wald (1940). In his neglected paper, Wald suggested that information from different price situations can determine a family of indifference curves up to a second-order approximation. In this paper, I depart from Wald's methodology and suggest a plausible estimable specification for the marginal rate of substitution function between goods and leisure, the parameters of which are estimated by maximum-likelihood methods. The particular focus in this paper is on the effect of work-related childcare programs. However, the methodology is more general and may be applied to a variety of work-subsidy programs. I. An Anatomy of Proposals for ChildCare Programs Proposals designed to relieve work-related childcare expenses have received the most attention. The Nixon administration has promoted several measures of this type. In 1971, an administration bill (HR 1) was introduced as "workfare" legislation designed to vacate welfare rolls by providing child care to working women. In 1972, tax laws were modified to give generous deductions for work-related childcare expenses if a woman worked 30 hours a week or more. Since some work requirement seems likely in any future legislation, I confine my analysis to such programs. S138