IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v30y2011i5p901-912.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do child care subsidies influence single mothers' decision to invest in human capital?

Author

Listed:
  • Herbst, Chris M.
  • Tekin, Erdal

Abstract

A child care subsidy is one of the most effective policy instruments to facilitate low-income individuals' transition from welfare to work. Although previous studies consistently find that subsidy receipt is associated with increased employment among single mothers, there is currently no evidence on the influence of these benefits on the decision to invest in human capital. Using data from the Kindergarten cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, this paper examines the impact of child care subsidy receipt on the likelihood of engaging in education and job training activities. We identify the impact of subsidy receipt by exploiting plausibly exogenous geographic variation in the distance that parents must travel from home in order to reach the nearest social service agency that administers the subsidy application process. Results suggest that child care subsidies encourage single mothers to engage in human capital investment. In particular, our instrumental variables estimates imply that subsidy receipt increases the likelihood that a single mother enrolls in courses at a school or university by 13 percentage points and participates in a job training program by 8 percentage points.

Suggested Citation

  • Herbst, Chris M. & Tekin, Erdal, 2011. "Do child care subsidies influence single mothers' decision to invest in human capital?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 901-912, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:30:y:2011:i:5:p:901-912
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775711000495
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Herbst, Chris M. & Tekin, Erdal, 2010. "Child care subsidies and child development," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 618-638, August.
    2. Tekin, Erdal, 2005. "Child care subsidy receipt, employment, and child care choices of single mothers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 1-6, October.
    3. Jonah B. Gelbach, 2002. "Public Schooling for Young Children and Maternal Labor Supply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 307-322, March.
    4. Erdal Tekin, 2007. "Childcare Subsidies, Wages, and Employment of Single Mothers," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 42(2).
    5. David Blau & Erdal Tekin, 2007. "The determinants and consequences of child care subsidies for single mothers in the USA," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 20(4), pages 719-741, October.
    6. Herbst, Chris M., 2008. "Who are the eligible non-recipients of child care subsidies?," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(9), pages 1037-1054, September.
    7. Chris Herbst, 2010. "The labor supply effects of child care costs and wages in the presence of subsidies and the earned income tax credit," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 199-230, June.
    8. Herbst, Chris M. & Tekin, Erdal, 2010. "The Impact of Child Care Subsidies on Child Well-Being: Evidence from Geographic Variation in the Distance to Social Service Agencies," IZA Discussion Papers 5102, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    9. Jean Kimmel, 1998. "Child Care Costs As A Barrier To Employment For Single And Married Mothers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(2), pages 287-299, May.
    10. David M. Blau & Alison P. Hagy, 1998. "The Demand for Quality in Child Care," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(1), pages 104-146, February.
    11. LaDonna Pavetti & Gregory Acs, 2001. "Moving Up, Moving Out, or Going Nowhere? A Study of the Employment Patterns of Young Women and the Implications for Welfare Mothers," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(4), pages 721-736.
    12. Paul M. Ong, 2002. "Car ownership and welfare-to-work," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(2), pages 239-252.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chris Herbst & Erdal Tekin, 2012. "Child Care Subsidies, Maternal Well-Being, and Child-Parent Interactions: Evidence from Three Nationally Representative Datasets," Working Papers 1372, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    2. Herbst, Chris M. & Tekin, Erdal, 2012. "The geographic accessibility of child care subsidies and evidence on the impact of subsidy receipt on childhood obesity," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 37-52.
    3. repec:pri:crcwel:wp12-01-ff is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Erdal Tekin, 2014. "Childcare subsidy policy: What it can and cannot accomplish," IZA World of Labor, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), pages 1-43, July.
    5. repec:pri:crcwel:wp11-20-ff is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Chris M. Herbst & Erdal Tekin, 2014. "Child Care Subsidies, Maternal Health, And Child–Parent Interactions: Evidence From Three Nationally Representative Datasets," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(8), pages 894-916, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:30:y:2011:i:5:p:901-912. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.