Does formal child care availability for 0-3 year olds boost mothers' employment rate? Panel data based evidence from Belgium

peer reviewed ; In 2003, a new multi-annual program aimed at increasing the availability of formal child care for 0-3 years old children was started in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium. This paper is interested in evaluating if this increased availability of formal child care resulted in a larger employment rate for women with at least one child under 3 years old. To this end, we use a difference-in-differences approach based on municipality-level panel data, taking advantage of the fact that the increased availability of formal child care widely varied across municipalities. We f... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Dujardin, Claire
Fonder, Muriel
Lejeune, Bernard
Dokumenttyp: journal article
Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
Verlag/Hrsg.: Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (ADRES)
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-26984697
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://orbi.uliege.be/handle/2268/225652

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