Many argue that childcare costs limit the labor supply of mothers, though existing evidence has been mixed. Using a child's eligibility for public kindergarten in a regression discontinuity instrumental variables framework, I estimate how use of a particular subsidy, public school, affects maternal labor supply. I find public school enrollment…

Since the mid-1960s, many state governments have introduced subsidies for school districts that offer kindergarten. This paper uses the staggered timing and age targeting of these grants to examine how the childcare subsidy implicit in public schooling affects maternal labor supply. Using data from five Censuses, I estimate that four of ten single…

Having a female first-born child significantly increases the probability that a woman's first marriage breaks up. Using this exogenous variation, recent work finds that divorce has little effect on women's mean household income. We further investigate the effect of divorce using Quantile Treatment Effect methodology and find that it increases…

Many studies document a clear relationship between the supply of marriageable men and marriage rates, but not many studies find that the supply of marriageable men affects the number of women who choose to be single mothers. A model is presented to address the issue.

Little is known about welfare reform's effects on family structure and children's living arrangements, an important focus for reformers. Using March CPS data, the authors find that state welfare waivers are associated with children being less likely to live with unmarried parents, more likely to live with married parents, and more likely to live…

Unmarried parents in the AHEAD study derive the majority of their long-term care hours from their children, and child caregivers are generally unpaid. This paper examines the extent to which the division of end-of-life transfers compensates caregiving children. In a model of siblings' altruistic contribution of care to a shared parent, the…

Increasing the probability of paying child support, in addition to increasing resources available for investment in children, also may alter the incentives faced by men to have children out of wedlock. We find that strengthening child support enforcement leads men to have fewer out-of-wedlock births and among those who do become fathers, to do so…

The expansion of child support enforcement system has increased the child-support receipt rates of never-married and previously married mothers. The studies reveal that if this system were not implemented, the child-support rates would be 1-9 percentage points lower.

In October 1999, the British government enacted the Working Families' Tax Credit, which aimed at encouraging work among low-income families with children. This paper uses panel data collected between 1991 and 2001 to evaluate the effect of this reform on single mothers. We find that the reform led to a substantial increase in their employment rate…

Cross-sectional studies find a positive relationship between a state's welfare benefits and single motherhood. But is this evidence of a "welfare effect" or rather of cross state differences in social attitudes that influence both policy and behavior? This paper demonstrates that the spatial variation in welfare policy long preceded the…

Increased child support payments may improve academic achievement of elementary school children more than other types of income. Increases in overall family income add to the level of cognitive stimulation available in the home. (SK)

National Education Longitudinal Study data were used to examine whether parents' divorce/remarriage or existing family disadvantages caused such outcomes as teens' lower educational attainment or higher rates of parenthood. Neither divorce nor remarriage during a youth's high school years was strongly correlated with preexisting characteristics of…

This paper develops and estimates a model for the choice of part-time and full-time employment and the decision to pay for childcare among single mothers. The results indicate that a lower childcare price and a higher full-time wage rate both lead to an increase in overall employment and the use of paid childcare. The part-time wage effects are…

American society is confronting the consequences of increase in divorce rates. There is substantial increase in households that are headed by a single female. The possible reasons for the rise in divorces and the labor market outcomes for women are analyzed. It is also noted that if the first-born is a girl, the marriage is less likely to…

This paper examines whether AFDC/TANF asset tests affect the asset holdings of low-educated single mothers. Special emphasis is given to vehicle assets that make up a very significant share of total wealth for poor families. Consistent with other recent research, the author finds little evidence that asset limits have an effect on the amount of…