Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/324367 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 17969
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children---through duration expansions to the kindergarten day---to better understand how an implicit childcare subsidy affects mothers and families. Exploiting full-day kindergarten variation across place and time from 1992 through 2022 and novel data on state-level policy changes, combined with a comparison of children of typical kindergarten age to older children, we measure effects on parental labor supply and family childcare expenses. Results suggest that families are responsive to these shifts. Full-day kindergarten expansions were responsible for as much as 24 percent of the growth in employment of mothers with kindergarten-aged children in this time frame.
Subjects: 
maternal labor supply
kindergarten
public schooling
JEL: 
H75
I28
J13
J22
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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