Does formal 0-3 years old child care availability boost employment rate of mothers ? Panel data based evidence from Belgium

In 2003, a new multi-annual program aimed at increasing the availability of formal child care for 0-3 year old children was launched in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium. This paper is interested in evaluating if this increased availability of formal child care resultedin a higher employment rate for women with at least one child under 3. To this end, we use a difference-in-differences approach based on municipality-level panel data, taking advantage of the fact that the increase in availability of formal child care differed greatly across municipalities. We find that the raise in... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Dujardin, Claire
Fonder, Muriel
Lejeune, Bernard
Dokumenttyp: conference paper not in proceedings
Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
Schlagwörter: Child care / Maternal employment / Difference-in-differences / Random trend model / Business & economic sciences / Special economic topics (health / labor / transportation.) / Sciences économiques & de gestion / Domaines particuliers de l’économie (santé / travail / transport.)
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26592271
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://orbi.uliege.be/handle/2268/197899

In 2003, a new multi-annual program aimed at increasing the availability of formal child care for 0-3 year old children was launched in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium. This paper is interested in evaluating if this increased availability of formal child care resultedin a higher employment rate for women with at least one child under 3. To this end, we use a difference-in-differences approach based on municipality-level panel data, taking advantage of the fact that the increase in availability of formal child care differed greatly across municipalities. We find that the raise in child care availability significantly increased the maternal employment rate, but to a lesser extent than expected, most likely because of a substantial crowding-out effect.