Abstract:

The first chapter examines the effects of child care subsidies on the work effort of single mothers, in the context of the post welfare era in the U.S. (after 1996). To estimate the effects of these subsidies on employment outcomes, this study uses a Full Information Maximum Likelihood approach (FIML) to jointly estimate (1) the program administrators' decision to offer a subsidy to applicant mothers, (2) the mothers' decision to apply for a child care subsidy and (3) an outcome equation (like the decision to work). The evidence presented is based on data collected in 1999 and 2002 from the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF). The results indicate that the child care subsidies analyzed in this chapter do not help mothers to move into employment in the first place, but they do help mothers to change their work schedule toward more standard hours and to switch from informal to formal child care. These results suggest that conditioning the access to child care subsidies on having employment at the moment of applying does not help to attract mothers who would benefit the most in terms of employment participation.

The second chapter provides new evidence on the maternal employment effects of the implicit child care subsidy provided by free public kindergarten for five year old children. It also explores whether the impact of this subsidy is heterogeneous across different groups of mothers and groups of states. This study uses data from the 2005, 2006 and 2007 rounds of the American Community Survey (ACS). My results suggest that, in the post welfare era, kindergarten access is still a significant source of child care for single mothers with young children. Results from the specifications estimated by ethnicity of mothers and by two group of states suggest a differential impact of public school enrollment across mother and state characteristics.

The third chapter describes the data, the sources of the data and the methodology used to construct the main variables utilized in Chapter 1 and 2.