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 COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on the labor supply of parents with young children. Using the monthly Current Population Survey, and following a pre-analysis plan, we use three variations of difference-in-differences to compare workers with childcare needs to those without. The first compares parents with young children and those without young children, while the second and third rely on the presence of someone who could provide childcare in the household: a teenager in one and a grandparent in the other. We analyze three outcomes: whether parents were “at work” (not sick, on vacation, or otherwise away from his or her job); whether they were employed; and hours worked. Contrary to expectation, we find the labor supply of parents with young children was not negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, some evidence suggests they were more likely to be working after the pandemic unfolded. For the outcomes of being at work and employed, our results are not systematically different for men and women, but some findings suggest women with young children worked almost an hour longer per week than those without. These results suggest that factors like employers allowing employees to work at home and informal sources of childcare aided parents in avoiding negative shocks to their labor supply during the pandemic.

• 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

References

Angrist, Joshua D., and William N. Evans. 1998. “Children and Their Parents’ Labor Supply: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Family Size.” American Economic Review 88 (3): 450–77.

Barkowski, Scott, Joanne Song McLaughlin, and Yinlin Dai. 2020. “Differential Labor Market Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic Response on Workers with Young Children.” Pre-Analysis Plan. OSF Registries. https://osf.io/vh952.

Bayham, Jude, and Eli P Fenichel. 2020. “Impact of School Closures for COVID-19 on the US Health-Care Workforce and Net Mortality: A Modelling Study.” The Lancet Public Health 5 (5): e271–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30082-7.

Bertrand, Marianne, Esther Duflo, and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2004. “How Much Should We Trust Differences-in-Differences Estimates?” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 119 (1): 249–75.

Blau, David, and Janet Currie. 2006. “Chapter 20 Pre-School, Day Care, and After-School Care: Who’s Minding the Kids?” In Handbook of the Economics of Education, edited by E. Hanushek and F. Welch, 2:1163–1278. Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1574-0692(06)02020-4.

Blau, David M., and Philip K. Robins. 1988. “Child-Care Costs and Family Labor Supply.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 70 (3): 374. https://doi.org/10.2307/1926774.

Blau, Francine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn. 2007. “Changes in the Labor Supply Behavior of Married Women: 1980–2000.” Journal of Labor Economics 25 (3): 393–438.

Brynjolfsson, Erik, John Horton, Adam Ozimek, Daniel Rock, Garima Sharma, and Hong-Yi TuYe. 2020. “COVID-19 and Remote Work: An Early Look at US Data.” Working Paper 27344. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27344.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2020a. “The Employment Situation - March 2020.” USDL-20-0521. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_04032020.pdf.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2020b. “The Employment Situation - April 2020.” USDL-20-0815. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_05082020.pdf.

Correia, Sergio. 2016. “Linear Models with High-Dimensional Fixed Effects: An Efficient and Feasible Estimator.” Working Paper. Duke University. http://scorreia.com/research/hdfe.pdf.

Courtemanche, Charles, Joseph Garuccio, Anh Le, Joshua Pinkston, and Aaron Yelowitz. 2020a. “Did Social-Distancing Measures in Kentucky Help to Flatten the COVID-19 Curve?” Working Paper 29. Lexington, KY: Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise. http://isfe.uky.edu/sites/ISFE/files/research-pdfs/NEWISFE%20Standardized%20Cover%20Page%20-%20Did%20Social%20Distancing%20Measures%20in%20Kentucky.pdf.

Courtemanche, Charles, Joseph Garuccio, Anh Le, Joshua Pinkston, and Aaron Yelowitz. 2020b. “Strong Social Distancing Measures In The United States Reduced The COVID-19 Growth Rate.” Health Affairs, May, 10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00608. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00608.

Dingel, Jonathan I., Christina Patterson, and Joseph Vavra. 2020. “Childcare Obligations Will Constrain Many Workers When Reopening the US Economy.” Working Paper 2020–46. Chicago, IL: Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago. https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/childcare-obligations-will-constrain-many-workers-when-reopening-the-us-economy/.

Fitzpatrick, Maria Donovan. 2012. “Revising Our Thinking About the Relationship Between Maternal Labor Supply and Preschool.” Journal of Human Resources 47 (3): 583–612.

Fitzpatrick, Maria Donovan. 2010. “Preschoolers Enrolled and Mothers at Work? The Effects of Universal Prekindergarten.” Journal of Labor Economics 28 (1): 51–85. https://doi.org/10.1086/648666.

Flood, Sarah, Miriam King, Renae Rodgers, Steven Ruggles, and J. Robert Warren. 2020. “Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population Survey: Version 7.0.” Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V7.0.

Gupta, Sumedha, Thuy Nguyen, Felipe Lozano Rojas, Shyam Raman, Byungkyu Lee, Ana Bento, Kosali Simon, and Coady Wing. 2020. “Tracking Public and Private Responses to the COVID-19 Epidemic: Evidence from State and Local Government Actions.” Working Paper 27027. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27027.

Havnes, Tarjei, and Magne Mogstad. 2011. “Money for Nothing? Universal Child Care and Maternal Employment.” Journal of Public Economics 95 (11–12): 1455–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.05.016.

Heckman, James J. 1974. “Effects of Child-Care Programs on Women’s Work Effort.” Journal of Political Economy 82 (2, Part 2): S136–63. https://doi.org/10.1086/260297.

Heggeness, Misty L. 2020. “Why Is Mommy So Stressed? Estimating the Immediate Impact of the ‘COVID-19 Shock’ on Parental Attachement to the Labor Market and the Double-Bind of Mothers.” Working Paper 33. Institute Working Paper. Minneapolis, M: Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. https://doi.org/10.21034/iwp.33.

Heim, Bradley T. 2007. “The Incredible Shrinking Elasticities: Married Female Labor Supply, 1978–2002.” Journal of Human Resources XLII (4): 881–918. https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.XLII.4.881.

IPUMS CPS. 2020. “CPS and COVID-19.” IPUMS CPS. May 2020. https://cps.ipums.org/cps/covid19.shtml.

Kahn, Lisa B., Fabian Lange, and David Wiczer. 2020. “Labor Supply in the Time of COVID19.” Working Paper 06–2020. Cahiers de Recherche. Cahiers de Recherche. Montréal, Québec: Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ. https://ideas.repec.org/p/mtl/montec/06-2020.html.

Lundin, Daniela, Eva Mörk, and Björn Öckert. 2008. “How Far Can Reduced Childcare Prices Push Female Labour Supply?” Labour Economics 15 (4): 647–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2008.04.005.

Müller, Kai-Uwe, and Katharina Wrohlich. 2020. “Does Subsidized Care for Toddlers Increase Maternal Labor Supply? Evidence from a Large-Scale Expansion of Early Childcare.” Labour Economics 62 (January): 101776. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2019.101776.

Neumark, David. 2001. “The Employment Effects of Minimum Wages: Evidence from a Prespecified Research Design The Employment Effects of MinimumWages.” Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 40 (1): 121–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/0019-8676.00199.

Rojas, Felipe Lozano, Xuan Jiang, Laura Montenovo, Kosali I. Simon, Bruce A. Weinberg, and Coady Wing. 2020. “Is the Cure Worse than the Problem Itself? Immediate Labor Market Effects of COVID-19 Case Rates and School Closures in the U.S.” Working Paper 27127. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27127.

Sevilla, Almudena, and Sarah Smith. 2020. “Baby Steps: The Gender Division of Childcare during the Covid-19 Pandemic.” Working Paper 13302. Discussion Paper Series. Bonn, Germany: IZA Institute of Labor Economics. http://ftp.iza.org/dp13302.pdf.

StataCorp. 2013. Stata Statistical Software: Release 13.1. College Station, TX: StataCorp LP.