Sunday, 23 October 2011: 12:35 PM
John Hisnanick, Ph.D.
,
Social Economic and Housing Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, Silver Spring, MD
Daniel J. Perez-Lopez, M.A.
,
Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC
Lynda L. Laughlin, Ph.D.
,
Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC
Objective: Over the last twenty-five years, the number of women employed full-time outside the home increased more than two-fold as has the use of non-parental child care, with approximately eight out of ten employed mothers with children under the age of six being dependent on some type of childcare arrangement. The demand for high quality, comprehensive care arrangements for preschoolers continues to be a major concern for employed parents. The supply of quality, non-parental care is limited. Quite often market conditions in conjunction with the increasing cost of quality childcare influence parental choices. Parental preferences for a comfortable, nurturing setting for preschool-age children often serve as the measure of quality care, however, when faced with the cost of such arrangements many parents are forced to choose a less than optimal situation.
Data/Methods: This paper builds upon the work of Johnson and Laughlin (2009), which used data from the 2004 SIPP wave 8 topical modules on child care and focused on investigating selected social and educational outcomes by child care arrangement. This research extends upon their investigation of childcare choices by looking at both the individual and joint impact that family income and mother’s labor force participation contribute to explaining the family’s selected child care arrangement. Moreover, the longitudinal nature of the 2004 SIPP panel, the data collected in the wave 4 and wave 8 topical modules on child care, as well as the wave 4 topical module data on child care from the 2008 SIPP panel, provides a large enough sample to allow us to assess family income and mother’s labor force dynamics.
Expected Results: Preliminary analysis of the data suggests that parents’ choices of childcare arrangement are largely influenced by the amount of household income, the amount of hours the mother works, as well as the level of education of both the mother and father.
JEL codes: D1, D64, J13
Keywords: childcare arrangements, parental-choice model
