Children’s Educational Enrollment and Maternal Labor

We investigate the impact of a reform in South Africa anticipating children’s entry into primary school on children’s school enrollment and mothers’ labour supply. We use Census data and exploit month-of-birth discontinuities and the before/after variation introduced by the reform. We report a net increase of 7pp. in school attendance at age 5. However, contrary to an established finding in the literature, we find no impact on mother’s employment and the type of jobs held. We reconcile our finding with those of previous studies by noting that South Africa is characterized by relatively high initial rates of school attendance and relatively low rates of maternal employment. In districts where these contextual factors are more similar to previous studies, we find that higher enrollment does lead to higher maternal employment.