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With Strings Attached: Grandparent-Provided Child Care and Female Labor Market Outcomes

Author

Listed:
  • Eva García-Morán
  • Zoë Kuehn

Abstract

Grandparents are regular providers of free child care. Similar to other forms of child care, availability of grandparent-provided child care affects fertility and labor force participation of women positively. However, grandparent-provided child care requires residing close to parents or in-laws which may imply costly spatial restrictions. We find that mothers residing close to parents or in-laws have lower wages and that the probability of having to commute increases if relatives provide child care. We build a model of residence choice, fertility, and female labor force participation that can account for the observed relationships. We simulate our model to analyze how women's decisions would change if the availability of grandparent-provided child care or family policies were altered. We nd that if child care subsidies were raised to the Swedish level, fertility and mothers' labor force participation would increase, while mobility would remain unchanged. The absence of grandparents, on the other hand, would increase mobility, while it would only have limited negative e ects on aggregate fertility and labor force participation.

Suggested Citation

  • Eva García-Morán & Zoë Kuehn, 2013. "With Strings Attached: Grandparent-Provided Child Care and Female Labor Market Outcomes," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 610, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp610
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Grandparent-provided child care; fertility; labor force participation; spatial restrictions; regional labor markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

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