IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp1908.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labour Supply and Childcare for British Mothers in Two-Parent Families: A Structural Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Parera-Nicolau, Antonia

    (European Commission)

  • Mumford, Karen A.

    (University of York)

Abstract

We develop and estimate a structural model of labour supply for British two parent families, taking explicit account of the importance of childcare related variables. We find working mothers do not increase their working hours when hourly wages increase, indeed, they are more likely to reduce their hours. The major inducement for working mothers to increase their working hours, that we find, is the provision of high quality formal childcare. Implying that government policy aiming at increasing working hours amongst British mothers of pre-school children may need to focus on the quality as well as the quantity of formal child care that is available.

Suggested Citation

  • Parera-Nicolau, Antonia & Mumford, Karen A., 2005. "Labour Supply and Childcare for British Mothers in Two-Parent Families: A Structural Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 1908, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1908
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp1908.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce D. Meyer & Dan T. Rosenbaum, 2001. "Welfare, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Labor Supply of Single Mothers," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(3), pages 1063-1114.
    2. Alan Duncan & Chris Giles, 1996. "Should we subsidise childcare, and if so, how?," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 17(3), pages 39-62, August.
    3. Richard Blundell & Alan Duncan & Julian McCrae & Costas Meghir, 2000. "The labour market impact of the working families’ tax credit," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 21(1), pages 75-103, March.
    4. Keane, Michael & Moffitt, Robert, 1998. "A Structural Model of Multiple Welfare Program Participation and Labor Supply," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(3), pages 553-589, August.
    5. John W. Budd & Karen Mumford, 2004. "Trade Unions and Family-Friendly Policies in Britain," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 57(2), pages 204-222, January.
    6. Soest, Arthur van & Kapteyn, Arie & Kooreman, Peter, 1993. "Coherency and regularity of demand systems with equality and inequality constraints," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1-3), pages 161-188.
    7. Blundell, Richard & Macurdy, Thomas, 1999. "Labor supply: A review of alternative approaches," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 27, pages 1559-1695, Elsevier.
    8. David T. Ellwood, 2000. "Anti-Poverty Policy for Families in the Next Century: From Welfare to Work--and Worries," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 187-198, Winter.
    9. Rebecca M. Blank, 2001. "Declining caseloads/increased work: what can we conclude about the effects of welfare reform?," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Sep, pages 25-36.
    10. Chiappori, Pierre-Andre, 1997. "Introducing Household Production in Collective Models of Labor Supply," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 191-209, February.
    11. Ribar, David C, 1995. "A Structural Model of Child Care and the Labor Supply of Married Women," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(3), pages 558-597, July.
    12. Mroz, Thomas A, 1987. "The Sensitivity of an Empirical Model of Married Women's Hours of Work to Economic and Statistical Assumptions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(4), pages 765-799, July.
    13. Arthur van Soest, 1995. "Structural Models of Family Labor Supply: A Discrete Choice Approach," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30(1), pages 63-88.
    14. Alan Duncan & Gillian Paull & Jayne Taylor, 2001. "Price and quality in the UK childcare market," IFS Working Papers W01/14, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    15. Duncan, Alan & Giles, Christopher, 1996. "Labour Supply Incentives and Recent Family Credit Reforms," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(434), pages 142-155, January.
    16. Pagan,Adrian & Ullah,Aman, 1999. "Nonparametric Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521355643, October.
    17. Maria Concetta Chiuri, "undated". "The Unitary vs. the Collective Model of Household Labour Supply with Child Care: An Empirical Test on a Sample of Italian Households," Discussion Papers 97/12, Department of Economics, University of York.
    18. Richard Blundell & Hilary W. Hoynes, 2004. "Has 'In-Work' Benefit Reform Helped the Labor Market?," NBER Chapters, in: Seeking a Premier Economy: The Economic Effects of British Economic Reforms, 1980–2000, pages 411-460, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Viitanen, Tarja K & Arnaud Chevalier, 2003. "The Supply of Childcare in Britain: Do Mothers Queue for Childcare?," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 211, Royal Economic Society.
    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. Bruno Arpino & Chiara D. Pronzato & Lara P. Tavares, 2012. "Mothers’ labour market participation: Do grandparents make it easier?," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 277, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    2. Wrohlich, Katharina, 2006. "Labor Supply and Child Care Choices in a Rationed Child Care Market," IZA Discussion Papers 2053, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Müller, Kai-Uwe & Wrohlich, Katharina, 2020. "Does subsidized care for toddlers increase maternal labor supply? Evidence from a large-scale expansion of early childcare," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    4. Guyonne Kalb, 2009. "Children, Labour Supply and Child Care: Challenges for Empirical Analysis," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 42(3), pages 276-299, September.
    5. Bruno Arpino & Chiara Pronzato & Lara Tavares, 2014. "The Effect of Grandparental Support on Mothers’ Labour Market Participation: An Instrumental Variable Approach," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 30(4), pages 369-390, November.
    6. Kai-Uwe Müller & Katharina Wrohlich, 2016. "Two Steps Forward—One Step Back? Evaluating Contradicting Child Care Policies in Germany," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 62(4), pages 672-698.
    7. Pronzato, Chiara & Patrício Tavares, Lara & Arpino, Bruno, 2010. "All in the family: informal childcare and mothers’ labour market participation," ISER Working Paper Series 2010-24, Institute for Social and Economic Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Karen Mumford & Antonia Parera‐Nicolau & Yolanda Pena‐Boquete, 2020. "Labour Supply and Childcare: Allowing Both Parents to Choose," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(3), pages 577-602, June.
    2. Richard Blundell & Alan Duncan & Julian McCrae & Costas Meghir, 2000. "Evaluating In-Work Benefit Reform: The Working Families Tax Credit in the U.K," JCPR Working Papers 160, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
    3. Richard Blundell & Hilary W. Hoynes, 2004. "Has 'In-Work' Benefit Reform Helped the Labor Market?," NBER Chapters, in: Seeking a Premier Economy: The Economic Effects of British Economic Reforms, 1980–2000, pages 411-460, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Rolf Aaberge & Ugo Colombino, 2014. "Labour Supply Models," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: Handbook of Microsimulation Modelling, volume 127, pages 167-221, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    5. Kurowska, Anna & Myck, Michal & Wrohlich, Katharina, 2012. "Family and Labor Market Choices: Requirements to Guide Effective Evidence-Based Policy," IZA Discussion Papers 6846, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Olivier Bargain & Kristian Orsini & Andreas Peichl, 2014. "Comparing Labor Supply Elasticities in Europe and the United States: New Results," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 49(3), pages 723-838.
    7. Olivier Bargain & Kristian Orsini & Andreas Peichl, 2012. "Comparing Labor Supply Elasticities in Europe and the US: New Results," Working Papers halshs-00805736, HAL.
    8. Bargain, Olivier & Orsini, Kristian, 2006. "In-work policies in Europe: Killing two birds with one stone?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(6), pages 667-697, December.
    9. Denise Doiron & Guyonne Kalb, 2005. "Demands for Child Care and Household Labour Supply in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 81(254), pages 215-236, September.
    10. Blundell, Richard & Macurdy, Thomas, 1999. "Labor supply: A review of alternative approaches," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 27, pages 1559-1695, Elsevier.
    11. John K. Dagsvik & Zhiyang Jia & Tom Kornstad & Thor O. Thoresen, 2014. "Theoretical And Practical Arguments For Modeling Labor Supply As A Choice Among Latent Jobs," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 134-151, February.
    12. Bargain, Olivier & Peichl, Andreas, 2013. "Steady-state labor supply elasticities: A survey," ZEW Discussion Papers 13-084, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    13. Guyonne Kalb, 2002. "Estimation of Labour Supply Models for Four Separate Groups in the Australian Population," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2002n24, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    14. Bargain, Olivier B. & Orsini, Kristian & Peichl, Andreas, 2011. "Labor Supply Elasticities in Europe and the US," IZA Discussion Papers 5820, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Bernard Fortin & Nicolas Jacquemet & Bruce Shearer, 2008. "Policy Analysis in Health-Services Market: Accounting for Quality and Quantity," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 91-92, pages 293-319.
    16. Kleven, Henrik Jacobsen & Kreiner, Claus Thustrup, 2006. "The marginal cost of public funds: Hours of work versus labor force participation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(10-11), pages 1955-1973, November.
    17. Löffler, Max & Peichl, Andreas & Siegloch, Sebastian, 2013. "Validating Structural Labor Supply Models," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79819, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    18. Klára Kalíšková, 2020. "Tax and transfer policies and the female labor supply in the EU," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 749-775, February.
    19. José Labeaga & Xisco Oliver & Amedeo Spadaro, 2008. "Discrete choice models of labour supply, behavioural microsimulation and the Spanish tax reforms," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(3), pages 247-273, September.
    20. Bloemen, Hans, 2010. "Income Taxation in an Empirical Collective Household Labour Supply Model with Discrete Hours," IZA Discussion Papers 4697, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    mothers; Britain; childcare; parents labour supply;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • J80 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:iza:izadps:dp1908. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.