This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the Lanham Act of 1940, a heavily-subsidized and universal child care program that was administered throughout the U.S. during World War II. I begin by estimating the impact of the Lanham Act on maternal employment using 1940 and 1950 Census data...

We study how parental leave benefit levels affect household labor supply, family income, and child outcomes, exploiting the Speed Premium (SP) in the Swedish leave system. The SP grants mothers higher benefits for a subsequent child without re-establishing eligibility through market work, if two...

We formalize and estimate the dynamic marginal efficiency cost of redistribution (MECR) in the spirit of Okun’s “leaky bucket”. We analyze the MECR of an income-contingent childcare subsidy program and the income tax within the German context, using a dynamic structural...

We formalize and estimate the dynamic marginal efficiency cost of redistribution (MECR) in the spirit of Okun’s “leaky bucket” to compare the MECR of an income-contingent childcare subsidy program and of the income-contingent tax and transfer schedule. We set up a dynamic structural model...

This paper considers the effect of child care costs on two labor market outcomes for single mothers - whether to participate in the labor market and whether to receive welfare. Hourly child care expenditures are estimated for all women in the sample (using data drawn from the 1992 and 1993...