College-educated mothers spend substantially more time in intensive childcare than less educated mothers despite their higher opportunity cost of time and working more hours. Using data from the 2010-2013 and 2021 waves of the Well-being Module of the American Time Use Survey, we investigate...

We develop a method to identify the individual latent propensity to select into treatment and marginal treatment effects. Identification is achieved with survey data on individuals' subjective expectations of their treatment propensity and of their treatment-contingent outcomes. We use the...

We assess the role of child care in the welfare to work transition using an unusually large and comprehensive data base. Our data are for Massachusetts, a state that began welfare reform in 1995 under a federal waiver, for the period July 1996 through August 1997. We find that both the nature of...

Rising female labor force participation and recent changes to the welfare system have increased the importance of child care for all women and, particularly, the less-skilled. This paper focuses on the child care decisions of women who differ by their skill level and the role that costs play in...

We examine how much of the overall decline in employment between the beginning of 2020 and 2021 can be explained by excess job loss among parents of young children, and mothers specifically. Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), we confirm that, in general, mothers with young...

This paper examines the impact of actual subsidy receipt of single mothers on their joint employment and child care mode decisions in the post-welfare reform environment, which places a high priority on parental choice with the quality and type of care chosen. Results indicate that single...

This paper provides an analysis of child care subsidies under welfare reform. Previous studies of child care subsidies use data from the pre-welfare-reform period, and their results may not apply to the very different post-reform environment. We use data from the 1999 National Survey of...

This paper analyzes the relationship between maternal labor supply and children's cognitive development, using a sample of three- and four-year-old children of female respondents from the 1986 National Longitudinal Surveys Youth Cohort (NLSY). Respondents in the NLSY were aged 21 to 29 in 1986; thus...

We show that Covid-19 illnesses persistently reduce labor supply. Using an event study, we estimate that workers with week-long Covid-19 work absences are 7 percentage points less likely to be in the labor force one year later compared to otherwise-similar workers who do not miss a week of work...

Using population-level administrative data, we study labor market externalities stemming from age-specific employment protection legislation (EPL) targeted towards older workers. Our results show no economically meaningful overall effects of the EPL on employment or earnings of either men or...