To Work or Not to Work? Child Development and Maternal Labor Supply
Abstract
We estimate the effect of early child development on maternal labor force participation. Mothers of poorly developing children may remain at home to care for their children. Alternatively, mothers may enter the labor force to pay for additional educational and health resources. Which action dominates is the empirical question we answer in this paper. We control for the potential endogeneity of child development by using an instrumental variables approach, uniquely exploiting exogenous variation in child development associated with child handedness. We find that a one unit increase in poor child development decreases maternal labor force participation by approximately 10 percentage points. (JEL J13, J16, J22)Download Info
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Article provided by American Economic Association in its journal American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.
Volume (Year): 1 (2009)
Issue (Month): 3 (July)
Pages: 97-110
Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.1.3.97
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Related research
Keywords:Find related papers by JEL classification:
- J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
- J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Kevin Denny & Wen Zhang, 2010.
"In praise of ambidexterity: how a continuum of handedness predicts social adjustment,"
Working Papers
201019, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
- Kevin Denny & Wen Zhang, 2010. "In praise of ambidexterity: How a continuum of handedness predicts social adjustment," Working Papers 201004, School Of Economics, University College Dublin.
- Johnston, David W. & Nicholls, Michael E. R. & Shah, Manisha & Shields, Michael A., 2010. "Handedness, Health and Cognitive Development: Evidence from Children in the NLSY," IZA Discussion Papers 4774, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
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