Balancing Work and Childcare : Evidence from COVID-19 School Closures and Reopenings in Kenya

This paper identifies the impact of childcare responsibilities on adult labor supply in thecontext of COVID-19-related school closures in Kenya. It compares changes in parents’ labor participation afterschools partly reopened in October 2020 for households with children in a grade eligible to return against householdswith children in adjacent grades. Using nationally-representative panel data from World Bank phonesurveys in 2020–21, the findings show that the partial reopening increases affected adults’ weekly labor hours by22 percent, with increases concentrated in household agriculture. The results suggest that school closuresaccount for over 30 percent of the fall in average work hours in the first few months after COVID-19 cases weredetected. The effects are driven by changes in household childcare burdens and child agricultural labor when astudent returns to school. The impacts are not significantly different by sex of the adult. Although both women and menincreased hours spent on childcare during the pandemic, women benefited more than men from reductions in childcareneeds, but took on more of the childcare burden when the returning student was a net childcare provider. The resultshighlight the importance of siblings in household childcare and suggest that policies that increase childcareavailability and affordability could increase adult labor supply in Kenya.