Full Citation
Title: Publicly Provided Preschool and Maternal Labor Supply: Evidence from Three Head Start Natural Experiments
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2019
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Abstract: This paper provides new evidence that federal provision of the low-income preschool program, Head Start, leads to increased labor force attachment among never married mothers. There has been a sustained interest in understanding how the low-income preschool program Head Start affects participating children. However, the scope of the program is likely to influence the decisions of other family members. For a low-income mother, access to Head Start likely provides a massive childcare cost subsidy, which might influence her labor supply decisions. Any impacts on maternal labor supply might prove an additional channel through which Head Start affects children's outcomes. To identify the impact of Head Start on the work decisions of never married mothers, we will exploit variation from three natural experiments. First, using the Head Start Impact Study randomized control trial between 2002 and 2008, we examine the impact of Head Start on the labor supply of unmarried mothers. Access to Head Start allows never married mothers to increase their labor supply, and these effects appear to be largest when the woman does not have younger children or when Head Start offers full day programing. To strengthen the external validity of our findings, we examine two additional natural experiments: the expansion of Head Start funding and enrollment in the 1990s and the initial, staggered roll-out of Head Start in the 1960s. In both cases, we use the Current Population Survey to compare mothers with age-eligible children to mothers with children below the age threshold in the same locality, to see if increases in funding affect the employment decisions of mothers with age-eligible children. The 1990s Head Start expansions are associated with an increase in the employment and income of unmarried mothers, with similar, but less consistent evidence from the 1960s. Our findings suggesting that viewing publicly provided early childhood education programs like Head Start as a bundle of family-level treatments can perhaps shed new light on the short run impacts, mid run fade out, and long-run improvements associated with Head Start.
Url: https://economics.byu.edu/Documents/Faculty/Riley Wilson/HS_laborsupply_wiklewilson2019.pdf
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Authors: Wikle, Jocelyn; Wilson, Riley
Publisher: Brigham Young University
Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Education, Labor Force and Occupational Structure
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