Usuarios
Women’s Employment and Childcare Choices in Spain Through The Great Recession
- Detalles
- Publicado: 02 Mayo 2019
Legazpe Moraleja, N. and Davia Rodríguez, M. Á. (2019): Women’s Employment and Childcare Choices in Spain Through The Great Recession, Feminist Economics, 25(2), 173-198, https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2019.1566754
Abstract
The Great Recession (2008–13) changed patterns in women’s employment and the use of formal and informal external childcare among mothers of young children in Spain. This paper analyzes these changes using an analytical strategy that takes into account interdependencies across the outcomes under study. The results show that the economic crisis has resulted in interesting changes in the use of external childcare across mothers’ and fathers’ employment status; for example, as men’s unemployment increased, the use of informal non-parental childcare declined, which might be related to (unobserved) changes in fathers’ involvement in childcare during the recession. These results further indicate the need for policies that improve access to formal childcare, as well as policies that provide men and women with employment stability.
KEYWORDS: Women’s employment, childcare, economic cycle, structural models, tobit models, Spain
Mothers’ employment and child care choices across the European Union
- Detalles
- Publicado: 02 Mayo 2019
Cebrián, I., Davia, M. Á., Legazpe, N. and Moreno, G. (2019): Mother’s Employment and Child Care Choices across the European Union, Social Science Research (on-line first), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2019.02.003
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyse cross-country differences in the maternal employment patterns and the demand for formal and informal child care as interrelated decisions across Europe. We explore a sample of preschoolers and their mothers drawn from the EU-SILC (2005–2013) in a set of 11 EU countries with different institutional settings. The analytical strategy – a set of simultaneous tobit models – allows for mutual interdependencies across decisions. The results vary across welfare regimes and are related to the public provision of child care as well as other dimensions of the institutional context and values. We have found complementarities between paid employment and child care while formal and informal care are shown to be mutual substitutes, even in countries where the provision of external, formal child care is very extended and child care does not depend much on families. This means that the mere expansion of public child care is not enough to improve maternal employment rates. Other institutional aspects of the labour market and societal values also need to be taken into account in this endeavour.