Child Care Availability, Quality and Affordability: Are Local Problems Related to Labour Supply?* (original) (raw)

We examine whether responses to survey questions about child care availability, quality and cost, aggregated at the local geographical level, have any explanatory power in models of partnered female and lone parent labour supply. We find evidence that partnered women and lone parents who live in areas with more reports of lack of availability, low quality or costly child care work fewer hours and are less likely to work than women in areas with fewer reported difficulties with child care. * Robert Breunig would like to thank the Australian Treasury for their support and hospitality. In a working paper, Breunig and Gong (2010) conduct the same analysis as that presented here using only a single wave (the sixth) of data. They find similar results as those reported here, but the statistical significance of the estimates is greatly increased by pooling across seven waves. This article has been improved by comments from Paul Miller and an anonymous referee. We appreciate comments from seminar participants at the LaTrobe University, Paris I Sorbonne, and the OECD. This article uses in-confidence unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. The HILDA project was initiated and is funded by the Commonwealth Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) and managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (MIAESR). The findings and views reported in this article, however, are those of the authors and the views should not be attributed to FaHCSIA, MIAESR or the Australian Treasury.