Quantifying the efficacy of childcare services on women employment

TL;DR

This paper quantitatively analyzes how childcare services positively influence women’s employment rates worldwide and in China, mainly by addressing employment vulnerability and breaking the motherhood penalty.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale quantitative evidence linking childcare service attendance to increased women employment, especially through reducing employment vulnerability.

Findings

Childcare attendance rate is positively correlated with women’s relative employment rate.

The positive effect is largely due to breaking the vulnerable employment dilemma.

Supports policy promotion of childcare services to enhance women employment.

Abstract

Women are set back in the labor market after becoming mother. Intuitively, childcare services are able to promote women employment as they may reconciliate the motherhood penalty. However, most known studies concentrated on the effects of childcare services on fertility rate, instead of quantitative analyses about the effects on women employment. Using worldwide panel data and Chinese data at province level, this paper unfolds the quantitative relationship between childcare services and women employment, that is, the attendance rate of childcare services is positively correlated with the relative employment rate of women to men. Further analysis suggests that such a positive impact may largely resulted from breaking the vulnerable employment dilemma.