Effekten af børnepasningens pris og kvalitet på forældrenes arbejdsudbud

Abstract:

This analysis provides evidence that quality of daycare affects parents’ employment on both the extensive and the intensive margin. The findings suggest that a lower number of children per childcare worker increase the employment probability of parents after having a child.  Furthermore a higher share of educated caregivers among the childcare workers increases employed mothers probability of being fulltime employed.  There is no significant effect of parents’ cost of daycare on their employment probability but the findings do suggest that higher price increases employed father’s probability of working full time.

The analysis exploits municipality variation in quality and cost of daycare and demonstrates via a pacebo test that the variation can be considered to be exogenous.  To the best of our knowledge no other studies have explicitly examined the effects of quality of daycare on patents’ employment. The results with regard to the parents’ cost of daycare are in line with results from Sweden and Norway. Like Denmark, these counties heavily subsidise childcare and have high female labor participation rates.