We explore how access to Head Start impacts maternal labor supply. By relaxing child care constraints, public preschool options like Head Start might lead mothers to reallocate time between employment, child care, and other activities. Using the 1990s enrollment and funding expansions and the...

This paper examines how access to informal insurance shapes family responses to reductions in social welfare benefits, and how these adjustments affect children's development. In 2003, Israel reformed its child allowance program, significantly reducing unconditional cash benefits for large...

This paper evaluates the impacts of a public program that introduced access to part-time childcare centers for children younger than four years of age in poor urban areas in Nicaragua. We explore the effects of this program on several measures of children's and parental outcomes. Our...

This paper evaluates the impacts of a public program that introduced access to part-time childcare centers for children younger than four years of age in poor urban areas in Nicaragua. We explore the effects of this program on several measures of children's and parental outcomes. Our...

We investigate the importance of various mechanisms by which child care policies can affect life‐cycle patterns of employment and fertility among women, as well as long‐run cognitive outcomes among children. A dynamic structural model of employment, fertility, and child care use is estimated...

As women increasingly entered the labor force throughout the late 20th century, the challenges of balancing work and family came to the forefront. We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children—through duration expansions to the kindergarten day—to...

Three states (Georgia, Oklahoma and Florida) recently introduced Universal Pre-Kindergarten (Universal Pre-K) programs offering free preschool to all age-eligible children, and policy makers in many other states are promoting similar policies. How do such policies affect the participation of...

We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children - through duration expansions to the kindergarten day - to better understand how an implicit childcare subsidy affects mothers and families. Exploiting full-day kindergarten variation across place and time...

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...

In October 1999, the British government enacted the Working Families? Tax Credit, a generous tax credit aimed at encouraging work among low-income families with children. This paper uses longitudinal data collected between 1991 and 2001 to evaluate the effect of this reform on single mothers. We...