The Effect of Day Care Facilities on Fertility of Working Married Women

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to examine the effect of the availability of day care facilities evaluated by working married women in Japan on their sequential fertility behavior. For this purpose, one-factor random effects probit model based upon a continuous latent variable method is employed and analysis performed, using 1993-1996 panel data from the Japanese Panel Survey on Consumers. The empirical results show that the availability of day care facilities has a positive effect on the fertility behavior during the observed period. In short, the higher their availability, the higher probability of birth among working married women. Consequently, it is clear that the provision of day care facilities should be considered as a meaningful social policy to help working married women reconcile career with child rearing.