Child care costs and accessibility can impact long run labor supply by affecting the size and quality of tomorrow’s labor force: size, through the birth rate, and quality, through a child’s development and human capital accumulation later in life. Understanding the determinants of fertility is central in today’s Europe, where problems arising from low fertility are of great concern. Moreover, in a knowledge-based society, it is important to uncover the preconditions for human capital accumulation, both for the growth potential of the economy, and to prevent disadvantaged children from falling behind.

The purpose of the project is to study the effects of subsidized childcare on long run labor supply and access to human capital. There are three subprojects:

1) Exploiting the natural experiment created by the implementation of the Swedish childcare cost reform of 2002, we study the causal effect of child care costs on fertility.

2) Using the same natural experiment as above, we study the impact of child care on child and parent health as measured by patient- and insurance register data.

3) Long run causal effects of childcare on education in adulthood are identified using regional variation in the timing of the Swedish 1970´s childcare expansion.

Time period: 2007-2011

The project Child Care and Long Run Labor Supply has been awarded a three year, prolonged, research grant from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

Publications

Mörk, Eva, Anna Sjögren and Helena Svaleryd (2009), "Cheaper Child Care, More Children," IFN Working Paper No. 782.