Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/223703 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 13261
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Stay-at-home orders (SAHOs) have been implemented in most U.S. states to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. This paper quantifies the short-run impact of these containment policies on the supply of and demand for child care. The child care market may be particularly vulnerable to a SAHO-type policy shock, given that many providers are liquidity-constrained. Using plausibly exogenous variation from the staggered adoption of SAHOs across states, we find that online job postings for early care and education teachers declined by 13% after enactment. This effect is driven exclusively by private-sector services. Indeed, hiring by public programs like Head Start and pre-kindergarten has not been influenced by SAHOs. In addition, we find little evidence that child care search behavior among households has been altered. Because forced supply-side changes appear to be at play, our results suggest that households may not be well-equipped to insure against the rapid transition to the production of child care. We discuss the implications of these results for child development and parental employment decisions.
Subjects: 
child care
coronavirus
COVID-19
early care and education
stay-at-home orders
JEL: 
H75
J21
I28
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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