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Newsletter
Did Covid-19 disproportionately affect mothers’ labor market activity?
School and day care center restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic have presented enormous challenges to parents trying to juggle work with child-care responsibilities. Still, empirical evidence on the impact of pandemic-related child-care constraints on the labor market outcomes of working parents is somewhat mixed. Some studies suggest the pandemic had no additional impact on the labor supply of parents, while other studies show not only that it did but that the negative impact was disproportionately borne by working mothers.
Working Paper
Why Is Mommy So Stressed? Estimating the Immediate Impact of the COVID-19 Shock on Parental Attachment to the Labor Market and the Double Bind of Mothers
I examine the impact of the COVID-19 shock on parents’ labor supply during the initial stages of the pandemic. Using difference-in-difference approaches and monthly panel data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), I compare labor market attachment, non-work activity, hours worked, and earnings and wages of those in areas with early school closures and stay-in-place orders with those in areas with delayed or no pandemic closures. While there was no immediate impact on detachment or unemployment, mothers with jobs in early closure states were 53.2 percent more likely than mothers in late ...
Working Paper
Parents in a Pandemic Labor Market
Gender gaps in labor market outcomes during the pandemic are largely due to differences across parents: Employment and labor force participation fell much less for fathers as compared to women and non-parent men at the onset of the pandemic; the recovery has been more pronounced for men and women without children, and; the labor force participation rate of mothers has resumed declining following the start of the school year. The latter is partially offset in states with limited school re-openings. Evidence suggests flexibility in setting work schedules offsets some of the adverse impact of ...
Journal Article
Interview: Melissa Kearney
Over the past two decades, University of Maryland economist Melissa Kearney has been researching economic inequality and mobility, poverty, and children's well-being. She was first drawn to such topics, she says, by her own family's experiences.
Discussion Paper
Restructuring the Eligibility Policies of the Child Care and Development Fund to Address Benefit Cliffs and Affordability: Florida as a Case Study
This paper explores how the current eligibility policies of the federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) create benefits cliffs that act as barriers to economic self-sufficiency. By examining Florida data and policies, the authors demonstrate how the program’s existing co-payment schedule affects the same hypothetical family living in two contrasting Florida counties: one with state median living costs and one with high living costs. The authors find that the CCDF income eligibility exit threshold is too low, particularly in high-cost counties. That occurs because the exit threshold ...
Report
Using Worker Flows to Assess the Stability of the Early Childcare and Education Workforce, 2010-2022
Turnover is a particular problem among childcare workers and less so among preschool and kindergarten teachers. In 2022, turnover in childcare work was about 65 percent higher than in a typical job, while attrition among preschool and kindergarten teachers was on par with the typical occupation.
Journal Article
Where Are They Now? Workers with Young Children during COVID-19
Employment levels for prime-age workers have been greatly reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The decline has fallen disproportionately on females, especially compared to past recessions, and the presence of young children is a driving factor in this differential response. This article identifies the impact of gender, young children, and the presence of a spouse on the attachment to employment for individuals who were employed immediately prior to the pandemic. Compared to the Great Recession and the most recent expansionary period in 2019, women with young children have a relatively lower ...
Building Momentum in Northeast Wisconsin to Improve Access to Childcare
As part of the Chicago Fed’s Spotlight on Childcare and the Labor Market, I reached out to community contacts in Wisconsin to hear perspectives on childcare access within the state. I learned that there is an emerging ecosystem of cross-sector partners who are coming together to address childcare challenges in Northeast Wisconsin. These organizations report that coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, access to childcare in Northeast Wisconsin has become more difficult for working parents in terms of affordability and availability. The Greater Fox Valley Child Care Alliance, which is focused ...
Working Paper
The Introduction of Formal Childcare Services in Inuit Communities and Labor Force Outcomes
We study the impacts of the introduction of formal childcare services to 28 Inuit communities in Canada's North. We use geographical variation in the timing of the introduction of childcare services in the late 1990s and early 2000s to estimate the impact of increased access to childcare. We combine the 1996, 2001, and 2006 long-form census files with data on the opening dates of childcare centres and the number of childcare spaces in each of the 28 communities over time. We find evidence of impacts on female labour force participation driven by multi-adult households in Quebec. Point ...
Working Paper
Parental Proximity and Earnings After Job Displacements
The earnings of young adults who live in the same neighborhoods as their parents completely recover after a job displacement, unlike the earnings of young adults who live farther away, which permanently decline. Nearby workers appear to benefit from help with childcare since grandmothers are less likely to be employed after their child's job displacement and since the earnings benefits are concentrated among young adults who have children. The result also suggests that parental employment networks improve earnings. Differences in job search durations, transfers of housing services, and ...