Cost of Childcare and Female Employment in the UK

Viitanen, Tarja K.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9914.2005.00325.x

Cited by 81 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…In contrast, in the market setting of the United Kingdom the cost of child care is found to influence its use (and female labour force participation), although there is evidence of unmet demand as well. The results of a simulation exercise from the same study suggest that a substantial percentage of families have a preference for informal child care even in spite of heavy subsidies for public day care institutions (Viitanen 2005). This supports the view that attitudes about child care use play an important role as well.…”

Section: Child Care and The Combination Of Paid Work And Family Lifesupporting

confidence: 67%

“…For example, in Germany and Italy, the number of day nurseries and nursery schools is very limited and opening hours usually do not fit the schedule of working parents (Kreyenfeld and Hank 2000;Del Boca 2002). In contrast, in the United Kingdom even if services are available and new places may be produced easily (as their number is to a larger extent subject to the free-market principle of supply and demand), the cost of formal child care is high making it unaffordable for many (Viitanen 2005). Additionally, cultural beliefs may discourage parents from sending their children to public child care institutions and therefore the use of non-formal care may be very important-as it is e.g.…”

Section: Child Care and The Combination Of Paid Work And Family Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this paper, we focus on formal child care only. The use of formal child care depends on four major factors: its affordability, its availability, the quality of care and its social acceptance (Van Dijk and Siegers 1996;Brewster and Rindfuss 2000;Kreyenfeld and Hank 2000;Viitanen 2005;Rindfuss et al 2007). The importance of these different aspects varies across Europe resulting in diverse child care enrolment rates.…”

Section: Child Care and The Combination Of Paid Work And Family Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

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Second birth rates across europe: interactions between women's level of education and child care enrolment

Bavel¹

2010

Populationyearbook

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Fertility differences in Europe are to a large extent due to parity progression after the first child. We therefore use data from the third round of the European Social Survey to investigate second-birth rates in 23 countries. Focusing on the role of education level and child care availability, we argue that child care provision is an important determinant of the opportunity cost of parity progression, particularly for highly educated women. We find that in countries where the highly educated have lower second birth rates than the less educated, total fertility tends to be low, and vice versa. In addition, the effect of the timing of the first child appears to be mediated by education level and child care availability: in countries where large proportions of young children attend formal child care, the more highly educated exhibit much higher second-birth rates, while child care availability does not affect parity progression for the less educated.

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Section: Child Care and The Combination Of Paid Work And Family Lifesupporting

confidence: 67%

Section: Child Care and The Combination Of Paid Work And Family Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Child Care and The Combination Of Paid Work And Family Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

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Second birth rates across europe: interactions between women's level of education and child care enrolment

Bavel¹

2010

Populationyearbook

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“…The UK provides a similar environment for working mothers though the UK does not actively support mothers retreat from paid employment with parental leave unpaid. Public childcare services in the UK are also under-developed and often prohibitively expensive when purchased in the private sector (Viitanen 2005). Mothers, therefore, are most likely to negotiate working-motherhood by obtaining (often poorly paid) part-time work in both these countries.…”

Section: Expectations Of the Penalty To Motherhood By Countrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sacrificing Their Careers for Their Families? An Analysis of the Penalty to Motherhood in Europe

Gash

2009

Soc Indic Res

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent Vanessa Gash, University of ManchesterAbstract: This paper examines the extent of and the mechanisms behind the penalty to motherhood in six European countries. Each country provides different levels of support for maternal employment allowing us to determine institutional effects on labour market outcome. While mothers tend to earn less than nonmothers, the penalty to motherhood is considerably lower in countries with policy support for working mothers. The paper establishes the United Kingdom and West Germany to have the least policy support for working mothers as well as the largest penalties to motherhood.

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“…As opposed to some reports in the literature (see mainly Del Boca et al, 2009, andViitanen, 2005) jointly modelling participation at work and childcare choice, the approach followed in this work is mainly descriptive. In order to separate observable compositional differences from unobserved differences between Italian and foreign mothers, we chose here a method often used in applied economics to study wage differentials, the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Childcare and participation at work in North-East Italy: Why do Italian and foreign mothers behave differently?

2015

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This paper examines two of the decision-making processes following the birth of a child: whether a working mother should continue with her job, and whether the couple should provide the child with formal childcare. Focusing on Padova and its district (North-East Italy), differences in the strategies of Italian and foreign mothers are discussed, controlling for socio-economic status, opinions on women's roles, and family structure, according to the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition. Six to thirty-six months after the birth of a child, the proportion of foreign mothers who are not employed is more than double that of Italian mothers (51% vs. 21%). In addition, 25% of Italian women entrust their children to the care of their parents and in-laws, vs. only 13% of foreign women. Although there are differences in the effects of individual characteristics on participation at work across the two groups, what matters most is the different composition of the Italian and foreign women's groups, especially as regards education, partners' characteristics and attitudes towards the job market and motherhood. As regards the maximum price a couple is willing to pay for formal childcare, intended to represent parents' preferences for formal childcare, differences between the two groups are also mainly explained by differences in composition.

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Cost of Childcare and Female Employment in the UK

Cited by 81 publications

References 22 publications

Second birth rates across europe: interactions between women's level of education and child care enrolment

Second birth rates across europe: interactions between women's level of education and child care enrolment

Sacrificing Their Careers for Their Families? An Analysis of the Penalty to Motherhood in Europe

Childcare and participation at work in North-East Italy: Why do Italian and foreign mothers behave differently?

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