TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Brewer, Mike
AU  - Cattan, Sarah
AU  - Crawford, Claire
AU  - Rabe, Birgitta
        TI  - Free Childcare and Parents' Labour Supply: Is More Better?
        PY  - 2016/Dec/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 10415
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp10415
        AB  - Despite the introduction of childcare subsidies in many countries, the cost of childcare is still thought to hinder parental employment. Many governments are considering increasing the generosity of their childcare subsidies, but the a priori effect of such a policy is ambiguous and little is known empirically about its likely impact.
This paper compares the effects on parents' labour supply of offering free part-time childcare and of expanding this offer to the whole school day in England using an empirical strategy which, unlike previous studies, exploits both date of birth discontinuities and panel data. We find that the provision of free part-time childcare has little, if any, causal impact on the labour market outcomes of mothers or fathers. Increasing the number of hours of free childcare to cover a full school day, however, leads to significant increases in the labour supply of mothers whose youngest child is eligible, with impacts emerging immediately and increasing over the months following entitlement.
        KW  - school entry
KW  - childcare
KW  - labour supply
KW  - difference-in-difference
        ER  -