Las etapas de la actividad minera y su incidencia en la generación de

The empirical literature investigating the effect of childcare on a mother’s labour market outcomes has looked at two different measures of childcare: the price of purchased childcare and the availability of childcare arrangements. In addition, childcare can be provided either in a formal or an informal way. In the first case, the caregiver is via a formal setting such a nursery school, whose services are usually regulated by law. In the

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second case, childcare is provided by, for example, a relative, a friend or through other arrangements such as non-registered childminders.

The economic models of household behaviour discussed above predict that comparative advantage, as reflected in wages and abilities, can affect the time allocation of individuals. However, other external factors such as the introduction of a public policy aimed at reducing the cost of childcare, may increase the opportunity cost of being unemployed and allow women with children to enter the labour market (Hallberg and Klevmarken, 2003). Hence, there is a broad empirical literature focusing on the estimation of the effect of the price of purchased childcare on the employment of mothers. For example, Lundin et al. (2008) analysed the effect of a Swedish reform that introduced a cap on childcare prices in 2002. They used the entire population of two-parent households observed the year before and the year after the reform. Using a difference-in-differences regression, they conclude that the reduction in childcare cost had no effect on the mother’s labour supply. A similar study was conducted by Havnes and Mogstad (2011) who analysed the effect of a Norwegian reform aimed to increase the child care coverage rate in Norway. They used a difference-in-differences approach exploiting the temporal variation in child care coverage. The sample used covered the entire population of Norwegian households observed over the period from 1967 to 2006. Their estimates showed that there was very little effect of the reform on maternal employment. Furthermore, the subsidies were found to have a crowding-out effect on the use of other informal childcare arrangements.

In a comprehensive survey, Currie and Blau (2004) summarized the results from twenty studies looking at the effect of the price of purchased childcare on maternal labour force participation, based on different US and Canadian samples. All these studies measured the price of child care by estimating the predicted value from a child care expenditure equation using OLS on the subsample of mothers who paid for care. The

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employment equation was usually estimated using probit or logit models. Currie and Blau (2004) showed that the estimated price elasticities differ substantially among these studies, ranging from 0.06 to -3.60 and they attribute this discrepancy to two problems. First, all these studies measured the price of childcare using the predicted value from a childcare expenditure equation, based on the subsample of employed mothers who had paid for child care. This was usually estimated by a two-stage Heckman (1979) approach, in order to account for sample selection. However, the variables used for identification, such as the average wages of child care workers or the number of children by age, were usually subject to endogeneity. Second, most of these studies do not account for the existence of unpaid child care options. As a result, these findings arguably reflect a biased effect of the real price of childcare on employment. In fact, the price elasticities are found to be very small in studies that properly account for informal and unpaid childcare arrangements (Blau and Hagy, 1998; Tekin, 2007).

Given that price elasticities appear to be very small and measures of childcare price are subject to endogeneity issues, another group of studies has focused on the availability of formal and informal childcare arrangements as a determinant of maternal employment. Duvander and Sundstrom (2002) argue that informal sources of childcare have liberated mothers from home responsibilities and encourage them to enter the labour market. Stolzenberg and Waite (1984) looked at two different ratios to measure the availability of childcare: the number of childcare workers (at a regional level) divided by the total number of employed females, and the number of childcare workers divided by the total number of women in the labour force. Using the Public Use Sample panel from US Census Bureau's 1970 data, they estimate the effect of formal childcare on a woman’s probability of labour force participation by the use of a probit model. Their estimates led to the conclusion that women with young children were more likely to be employed in areas with higher availability of childcare services. Del Boca (2002) exploited the

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regional variation in the availability of nursery schools in Italy, using a sample of 227 mothers from a three-year household panel (the Survey on Household Income and Wealth) of the Bank of Italy. She estimated the impact of childcare on the probability of working using a fixed effects logit model and a cross-sectional logit specification. In both cases, the availability of child care facilities had a positive effect on the probability of working.

Leibowitz et al. (1988) looked at the effect of formal and informal sources of care on a mother's labour supply. Using data from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women, they estimate a logit model based on a sample of mothers living in the US between 1966 and 1978. Their findings show that mothers who lived in the same area where they had grown up were 24.8 percentage points more likely to be employed two years after the childbirth. This analysis is based on the idea that women who live in the area in which they grew up have better access to a network of extended family and friends for childcare. One possible critique is that their network of relatives and friends might also reduce the cost of looking for a job, thereby allowing them to find a job more easily than women who live far from the area in which they were raised. If this is the case, their estimate would be biased.

In conclusion, the price elasticities of childcare have been found to be very small. However, the conclusions obtained from studies based on Sweden, Norway, Canada cannot be easily extended to the Italian case. In fact, since the range of public and private nursery schools in Italy is very limited, a decrease in the price of a nursery school is not likely to affect the use of those services. In addition, studies looking at the effect of the availability of childcare have usually focused on aggregate measures of childcare, such as the number of childcare workers per employed female, or the number of nursery schools at a regional level. However, the use of such aggregate measures may mask the heterogeneity of childcare within the same region, because in the case of Italy price and

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availability of nursery schools are regulated at a municipal level. In this chapter, we use the father’s engagement with childcare as a measure of childcare availability, which is measured at household level and therefore more suited to the case of Italy.