Young Children and Parents' Labor Supply during COVID-19

Barkowski, Scott and McLaughlin, Joanne Song and Dai, Yinlin (2020): Young Children and Parents' Labor Supply during COVID-19.

Abstract

We study the effect of childcare needs during COVID-19 and parental labor supply. Following a pre-analysis plan, we implement three variations of an event-study research design comparing workers with and without childcare responsibilities. We find childcare needs did not negatively affect parents' labor supply during the pandemic, with some evidence suggesting parents with childcare requirements were more often working. On the extensive margin, our results are not systematically different for men and women, but some increases are found on the intensive margin only for mothers. We provide evidence suggesting the ability to work remotely helped parents avoid labor supply decreases.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Labor supply; COVID-19; Childcare; School closures; Coronavirus
• Subjects: H - Public Economics > H1 - Structure and Scope of Government > H12 - Crisis Management; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor > J22 - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

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