In recent years, child care subsidies have become an integral part of federal and state efforts to move economically disadvantaged parents from welfare to work. Although previous empirical studies consistently show that these employment-related subsidies raise work levels among this group,...

Although a large literature examines the effect of non-parental child care on preschool-aged children's cognitive development, few studies deal convincingly with the potential endogeneity of child care choices. Using a panel of infants and toddlers from the Birth cohort of the Early Childhood...

This paper combines multiple data sources to study the impact of the minimum wage on service quality and consumer well-being within the child care market. Although child care firms increase teacher pay in response to minimum wage reforms, we find no impact on employment levels. Instead,...

This paper exploits novel data and empirical methods to examine parental preferences for child care. Specifically, we analyze consumer reviews of child care businesses posted on the website Yelp.com. A key advantage of Yelp is that it contains a large volume of unstructured information about a...

Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) are increasingly deployed by states to monitor and improve the quality of non-parental child care settings. By making information on program quality accessible to the public, QRIS attempts to alter parental preferences for quality-related attributes...

Broadband (high-speed) internet access expanded rapidly from 1999 to 2007. This expansion is associated with higher economic growth and labor market activity. In this paper, we examine whether the rollout also affected the social connections teens make. Specifically, we look at the relationship...

We estimate the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the child care market. We find that the industry is substantially more exposed to the business cycle than other low-wage industries and responds more strongly to negative shocks than positive ones. Indeed, child care employment requires more...

Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) are increasingly deployed by states to monitor and improve the quality of non-parental child care settings. By making information on program quality accessible to the public, QRIS attempts to alter parental preferences for quality-related attributes...

This paper examines the impact of the spatial accessibility of public human services agencies on the likelihood of receiving a child care subsidy among disadvantaged mothers with young children. In particular, we collect data on the location of virtually every human services agency in the U.S....

A complete account of the U.S. child care subsidy system requires an understanding of its implications for both parental and child well-being. Although the effects of child care subsidies on maternal employment and child development have been recently studied, many other dimensions of family...