Abstract:What role does affordable and widely available public child care play for fertility? We exploit a major German reform generating large temporal and spatial variation in child care coverage for children under the age of three. Our precise and robust estimates on birth register data reveal that increases in public child care have significant positive effects on fertility. The fertility effects are more pronounced at the intensive than at the extensive margin, and are not driven by changes in the timing of births… Show more
“…In near-bombed municipalities, pupils in nursery schools increased by 2.5 children or 24 percent from the pre-LPT mean ( Table 3, panel A). Moreover, fertility increased by an additional 13 percent (column 1) to 20 percent (column 4) from the pre-reform average (see Bauernschuster, Hener and Rainer (2016) for evidence on the impact of public childcare on fertility in Germany).…”
This paper studies how fiscal decentralization affects local services. It exploits a 1993 reform that increased the fiscal autonomy of Italian municipalities by introducing a local property tax. The identification leverages cross-municipal variation in the degree of decentralization stemming from Allied bombings during WWII. Decentralization reduced overall spending, but expanded municipal services, such as nursery schools. These effects are larger in areas with higher political competition. The paper also investigates how these changes in local services affected the labor markets. Decentralization, likely through expanded nursery schools, increased female labor supply, reducing the gender gap in employment.JEL Classification: H71, H75, J20, H77, I21.
“…In near-bombed municipalities, pupils in nursery schools increased by 2.5 children or 24 percent from the pre-LPT mean ( Table 3, panel A). Moreover, fertility increased by an additional 13 percent (column 1) to 20 percent (column 4) from the pre-reform average (see Bauernschuster, Hener and Rainer (2016) for evidence on the impact of public childcare on fertility in Germany).…”
This paper studies how fiscal decentralization affects local services. It exploits a 1993 reform that increased the fiscal autonomy of Italian municipalities by introducing a local property tax. The identification leverages cross-municipal variation in the degree of decentralization stemming from Allied bombings during WWII. Decentralization reduced overall spending, but expanded municipal services, such as nursery schools. These effects are larger in areas with higher political competition. The paper also investigates how these changes in local services affected the labor markets. Decentralization, likely through expanded nursery schools, increased female labor supply, reducing the gender gap in employment.JEL Classification: H71, H75, J20, H77, I21.
“…These studies are informative not only about the female labour supply, mostly at the extensive margin, but also about now widely debated policies with the goal of universal childcare, with quite high quality and at affordable prices. Past studies cover Canada, the United States, Germany and Norway, with most showing a positive effect on maternal employment, including Baker, Gruber and Mulligan (2008) and Lefebvre and Merrigan (2008) for Canada, Bauernschuster, Hener, Rainer (2016) for Germany and Cascio (2009) for the United States.…”
Section: Public Childcare and Maternal Employmentmentioning
In this paper, we investigate whether the expansion of childcare leads to an increase in the female labour supply. We measure female labour supply at both the extensive and intensive margin. For identification, we exploit a nationwide reform that expanded childcare for 1-2year-olds in Norway. Our results reveal a significant increase in the overall employment of mothers in the target group, but only weak evidence of an increase in contracted hours of work. However, both adjustments are only short term following the reform. When we consider subgroups of mothers more closely, we find substantial heterogeneity in the affected outcomes and the timing of these effects. In particular, when we exclude mothers on job-protected maternity leave and with currently zero hours of work from the target group, we estimate even larger effects on employment and now significant effects on actual hours of work. For mothers with more than one child, we find significant long-term effects of the reform on both employment and hours of work.
“…Daher wird seit 2005 mit dem Tagesbetreuungsausbaugesetz der Ausbau von Kindertagesstätten massiv vorangetrieben, 2007 folgte mit dem "Krippengipfel" das Ziel einer 35-prozentigen Abdeckung, seit 2013 (beschlossen in 2009) besteht für jedes Kind ab einem Jahr (bis zur Grundschule) der Anspruch auf einen Betreuungsplatz. Bauernschuster et al (2014) ermitteln in einem Difference-in-Differences-Ansatz die Wirkung des Kindertagesbetreuungsausbaus auf die Geburtenrate, indem sie westdeutsche Bundesländer nach dem Ausbau der Kindertagesbetreuung im Zeitraum 2002untersuchen. Der Untersuchungszeitraum liegt zwischen 1998und 2009, wobei sie in zwei Phasen (von 2005und 2008) unterteilen, in denen die Politikinitiativen stattfanden.…”
Section: Kindertagesbetreuungunclassified
“…Kontinuierlich gezahlte, finanzielle Leistungen wie das Kindergeld erleichtern anscheinend den Entschluss zum ersten Kind (Laroque und Salanié 2004;Rainer et al 2012), Betreuungsangebote erhöhen hingegen stärker die Zahl weiterer Kinder (Bauernschuster et al 2014), wie es sich ebenfalls z. B. für Norwegen gezeigt hat (Kravdal 1996).…”
Section: Kindertagesbetreuungunclassified
“…Worauf Bauernschuster et al (2014) leider nicht eingehen, sind die regional sehr unterschiedlichen Preise der Betreuungsangebote. Für Eltern mit geringem (potentiellen) Einkommen ist der Vorteil der Betreuung geringer, da sie einen geringeren Lohn aus einer Erwerbstätigkeit ziehen, im Extremfall unter dem Preis der Kinderbetreuung (Mörk et al 2013).…”
Zusammenfassung Der demographische Wandel stellt zahlreiche Industrieländer vor große Herausforderungen, da er die Finanzierung der sozialen Sicherungssysteme gefährdet. Die Politik hat auf diese Herausforderungen mit zahlreichen Maß-nahmen reagiert, die zum einen die Auswirkungen des demographischen Wandels abfedern und zum anderen die Geburtsraten erhöhen sollen. Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, die in Deutschland ergriffenen Maßnahmen, darzustellen, aus ökonomischer Sicht zu bewerten und mit den in anderen Ländern ergriffenen Maßnahmen zu vergleichen.Schlüsselwörter Demographischer Wandel · Soziale Sicherungssysteme · Wirtschaftspolitische Maßnahmen JEL-Classification J10 · J18 · H53 · H55 Abstract Demographic change is a serious challenge for a number of industrialized countries as it jeopardizes financing social security. Economic policy reacted to this challenge with a number of measures which aim at coping with the consequences of demographic change and also at increasing birth rates. The goal of this paper is to present measures taken up in Germany and to evaluate them from an economic perspective. Moreover, they are compared to the measures taken up by other countries.
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