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Title: Child Care Costs and the Return-to-Work Decisions of New Mothers
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Barrow, Lisa
Child Care Costs and the Return-to-Work Decisions of New Mothers
Economic Perspectives 23,4 (November 1999): 42-55.
Also: http://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedhep/y1999iqivp42-55nv.23no.4.html
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Keyword(s): Child Care; Economics of Gender; Family Income; Household Composition; Maternal Employment; Wealth; Work Histories

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

In this article, I examine the economic determinants of a woman's decision to return to work quickly following childbirth. I consider three key factors in this decision: the opportunity cost of taking time out of the labor force (that is, the potential wage rate available to a woman), the wealth effect of other family income, and most particularly, the opportunity cost of working outside the home in terms of child care costs.

I first describe a simple theoretical model of a new mother's return-to-work decision. The model predicts that the decision to return to work will depend on a woman's wage net of hourly child care costs and other family income (including spouse or partner income). I then test the theoretical model as closely as possible. In order to get a measure of child care costs faced by women as they decide whether to return to work, I calculate average child care worker wages across states and over time to proxy for variation in child care cost across states and over time. I find that women with higher wages are significantly more likely to return to work, and women facing higher child care costs or having greater other family income are significantly less likely to return to work after first birth. I also find that older women, women with more education, and women whose adult female role model was working when they were teenagers are more likely to return to work.

Bibliography Citation
Barrow, Lisa. "Child Care Costs and the Return-to-Work Decisions of New Mothers." Economic Perspectives 23,4 (November 1999): 42-55.