Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/58437 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 6398
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
In the U.S., grandparents look after one in five preschool children of employed women. Does this source of informal childcare increase female labor force participation and if so, up to what extent? The main challenge to answer this question is that a positive relationship between grandparents' childcare and female labor force participation might not be causal. We use the maternal grandmother's death as an instrument of grandparents' childcare to measure the effect of grandparents' childcare on maternal labor force participation (MLFP). We compare OLS and IV estimates and find that grandparents' childcare increases MLFP by 15 percentage points on average. We argue that most of the effect is driven by families from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Subjects: 
maternal labor force participation
grandparents
childcare
NLSY
JEL: 
J2
I3
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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