Revising Our Thinking About the Relationship Between Maternal Labor Supply and Preschool
利用幼儿园入学资格的断点回归和工具变量方法，研究发现公立幼儿园仅提高了没有其他年幼子女的单身母亲的就业率，并对比了早期研究结果的差异。
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 increases only the employment of single mothers without additional young children. I compare this result to previous work, focusing on striking increases in a similar setting but earlier period (Gelabch 2002). Differences in the population of mothers, labor supply, and patterns of lifecycle events likely drive the discrepancy in results.