Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Childcare Responsibilities and Parental Labor Market Outcomes During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  • Published:
Journal of Labor Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A substantial fraction of k-12 schools and childcare facilities in the United States closed their in-person operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. These closures may have altered the labor supply decisions of parents of affected children due to a need to be at home and take care of their children during the school day. In this paper, we examine the impact of school and childcare facility closures on parental labor market outcomes. We test whether COVID-19 facilities closures have a disproportionate impact on parents of children under 18 years old. Our results show that both women’s and men’s work lives were affected by school closures, with both groups seeing a reduction in the likelihood of working, work hours and the likelihood of working full-time. We also find that closures had a corresponding negative effect on the earnings of fathers of children under 18 years old, but not on mothers. These effects are concentrated among parents without a college degree, parents working in occupations that do not lend themselves to telework, and parents without other family members living at home, suggesting that such individuals had a more difficult time adjusting their work lives to school and childcare facility closures.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available at: https://doi.org/10.3886/E198601V1.

Notes

  1. Our two papers were developed in parallel. First drafts of each paper were posted online in the same week in January 2022 (unbeknownst to either set of authors beforehand).

  2. Our definition is based on the definition of “usual full-time work” in the CPS published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#fullparttime.

  3. For those with zero earnings, we assign a value of $1 before we transform them to logarithmic values for our estimations. Alternatively, we transform the data using the inverse hyperbolic sine of real earnings and find very similar results (available upon request).

  4. Only civilians age 15 years old and over employed as wage/salary workers (i.e., excluding self-employed individuals) in an outgoing rotation group of CPS are asked this question. In our sample, we assign zero earnings to individuals that are in an outgoing rotation group of CPS and are classified as unpaid family workers, unemployed or not in the labor force.

  5. The question about COVID-induced telework first appeared in the CPS in May 2020. For months prior to that, we code the variable as zero for all individuals.

  6. Given the strong correlation (0.89) between school and childcare facility closures, primarily because childcare facilities schedules often align with local school calendars, we cannot separate childcare facility closures from school closures in our regressions due to multicollinearity concerns. Thus, in order to provide a more complete understanding of the impact of the closures on the parents of pre-kindergarten and school-aged children, we use a combined measure of school and childcare facility closures in our analysis.

  7. Based on our calculations using Safegraph data, foot traffic declines in June and July by about 70% relative to peak school visits in 2019.

  8. https://about.burbio.com/school-opening-tracker.

  9. https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series.

  10. https://github.com/KFFData/COVID-19-Data/tree/kff_master/State%20Policy%20Actions/State%20Social%20Distancing%20Actions.

  11. The correlation between the number of own children residing in the household and presence of child age < 18 is 0.7535. Note that the results do not significantly change if we drop the number of own children residing in the household from the controls.

  12. We used 4-digit industry and occupation codes as reported in the CPS. These include a category for no occupation given. HSS do not include industry and occupation controls in their analysis, but they do exclude workers in the k-12 education sector in their main analysis.

  13. Due to the limitations of the CPS, which only provides the ages of the eldest and youngest children in the household, we focus on using the age of the eldest child in our analysis. For robustness checks, we also included results from an alternative specification that uses the age of the youngest child in the Appendix.

  14. Results using the age of youngest child are presented in Appendix Table 12 (female) and 13 (males).

  15. Additional results from these specifications are available upon request.

  16. According to Albanesi and Kim (2021b), flexible occupations are those that enable their workers to perform their tasks from a remote location, while inflexible occupations involve outdoor tasks or necessitate the use of on-site equipment. Meanwhile, the distinction between high-contact and low-contact occupations is determined by the physical proximity of workers to either customers or colleagues while performing work duties.

  17. This is also consistent with the findings for self-employed individuals presented in Appendix Table 14. We find that school and childcare facility closures had no statistically significant impact on the employment outcomes of self-employed parents. This lack of impact is partly attributed to the inherent flexibility of self-employment, which often includes control over work schedules, hours, and location. Similarly, this flexibility extends to individuals in occupations with a high potential for teleworking, which also mitigates the impact of the closures.

  18. Promoting the ability of the essential workforce to continue working despite closure and social distancing orders were critical to public health and safety, as well as to maintaining economic stability and national security (National Conference of State Legislatures 2021).

  19. See Albanesi and Kim (2021b); Shore (2010) for evidence on risk-sharing in the labor-market behavior of married couples.

  20. The CPS has a short panel component, where individuals are interviewed for 4 months, are out of the survey for 8 months, and then interviewed for another 4 months. However, this is likely insufficient to tackle the question of changes in occupation at the individual level.

  21. Recall that we do not use June and July in our analysis as most U.S. schools are on summer break during those months. However, including summer months in the sample gives similar estimates as the baseline results in Table 2. Results are shown in Appendix Table 17.

  22. Recall that Burbio does not have data on childcare facility closures.

  23. 42% of individuals with at least college degree are in occupations with telework potential, as opposed to only 13% of individuals without college degree.

  24. 24.55 million women and 26.25 million men with children less than 18 years old were employed in 2019 (see BLS Table 5: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/famee_04212021.pdf). We multiply our coefficients in Table 2 for the reduction in individuals at work due to school closures (1.8 percentage points for women, and 1.0 percentage points for men) by these figures as well as the average percentage of closed schools/childcare facilities in our data in 2020-21 (0.38) to arrive at the estimated reductions of 168,000 women and 100,000 men working because of closures. To estimate the reduction in work hours, we do the same thing but use our interaction coefficients in the work hours regressions (0.9 hours for women, and 1.8 hours for men; also shown in Table 2) to arrive at a loss of 8 million hours for women and 18 million hours for men due to closures. For brevity, the values reflected in the text are rounded.

References

  • American Hospital Association (2022) COVID-19 Vaccine for children 6 months-4 years old preliminary considerations for pediatric planning. Preliminary considerations for pediatric planning retrieved from https://www.aha.org/guidesreports/2022-02-03-covid-19-vaccine-children-6-months-4-years-old-preliminary-considerations. Access July 2022

  • Adams-Prassl A, Boneva T, Golin M, Rauh C (2020) Inequality in the impact of the coronavirus shock: evidence from real time surveys. J Public Econ 189:104245

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Albanesi S, Kim J (2021a) The gendered impact of the COVID-19 recession on the US Labor Market (no. w28505). National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w28505

  • Albanesi S, Kim J (2021b) Effects of the COVID-19 recession on the US labor market: occupation, family, and gender. J Econ Perspect 35(3):3–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alon T, Coskun S, Doepke M, Koll D, Tertilt M (2021) From mancession to shecession: women’s employment in regular and pandemic recessions. No. w28632. National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w28632

  • Alon TM, Doepke M, Olmstead-Rumsey J, Tertilt M (2020) The impact of COVID-19 on gender equality (No. w26947). National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w26947

  • Alsan M, Chandra A, Simon K (2021) The great unequalizer: initial health effects of COVID-19 in the United States. J Econ Perspect 35(3):25–46

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amuedo-Dorantes C, Marcen M, Morales M, Sevilla A (2020) COVID-19 School closures and parental labor supply in the United States. Discussion Paper Series IZA Institute of Labor Economics https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/13827/covid-19-school-closures-and-parental-labor-supply-in-the-united-states

  • Andrasfay T, Goldman N (2021) Reductions in 2020 US life expectancy due to COVID-19 and the disproportionate impact on the Black and Latino populations. Proc Natl Acad Sci 118(5):e2014746118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014746118

  • Baker M, Gruber J, Milligan K (2008) Universal child care, maternal labor supply, and family well-being. J Polit Econ 116(4):709–745

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barkowski S, McLaughlin JS, Dai Y (2021) Young children and parents’ labor supply during COVID-19. Available at SSRN 3630776. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3630776

  • Bauernschuster S, Schlotter M (2015) Public child care and mothers’ labor supply—evidence from two quasi-experiments. J Public Econ 123:1–16

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berlinski S, Galiani S (2007) The effect of a large expansion of pre-primary school facilities on preschool attendance and maternal employment. Labour Econ 14(3):665–680

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berthelon M, Kruger D, Oyarzún M (2023) School schedules and mothers’ employment: evidence from an education reform. Rev Econ Househ 21(1):131–171

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blanden J, Crawford C, Fumagalli L, Rabe B (2021) School closures and parents’ mental health. ISER briefing note. https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/School-closures-and-parentsmental-health.pdf

  • Blau FD, Koebe J, Meyerhofer PA (2021) Who are the essential and frontline workers? Bus Econ 56:168–178

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonacini L, Gallo G, Scicchitano S (2021) Working from home and income inequality: risks of a ‘new normal’with COVID-19. J Popul Econ 34(1):303–360

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brewer M, Cattan S, Crawford C, Rabe B (2022) Does more free childcare help parents work more? Labour Econ 74:102100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brodeur N (2020) Once school starts, I am not going to be OK’: Remote learning during COVID-19 has Seattle-area parents learning their own limits. Seattle Times. Retrieved from https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/remote-learning-during-covid-19-has-seattle-area-parents-learning-their-own-limits/. Access Oct 2021

  • Brussevich M, Dabla-Norris E, Khalid S (2022) Who bears the brunt of lockdown policies? Evidence from tele-workability measures across countries. IMF Econ Rev 70(3)560–589

  • Cascio EU (2009) Maternal labor supply and the introduction of kindergartens into American public schools. J Hum Resour 44(1):140–170

    Google Scholar 

  • Catsambis S (2001) Expanding knowledge of parental involvement in children’s secondary education: connections with high school seniors’ academic success. Soc Psychol Educ 5:149–177

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collins C, Ruppanner L, Landivar C, Scarborough WJ (2021) The Gendered consequences of a weak infrastructure of care: School Reopening Plans and Parents’ employment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gend Soc 35(2):180–193

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Contreras D, Sepúlveda P (2017) Effect of lengthening the school day on mother’s labor supply. World Bank Econ Rev 31(3):747–766

    Google Scholar 

  • Correll SJ, Benard S, Paik I (2007) Getting a job: is there a motherhood penalty? Am J Sociol 112(5):1297–1338

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dehos FT, Paul M (2023) The effects of after-school programs on maternal employment. J Hum Resour 58(5):1644–1678

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dill K (2021) Does working from home have to mean a lower salary? Wall St J. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-working-from-home-have-to-mean-a-lower-salary-11635699600. Accessed Oct 2022

  • Dimova R, Wolff FC (2011) Do downward private transfers enhance maternal labor supply? Evidence from around Europe. J Popul Econ 24:911–933

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dingel JI, Neiman B (2020) How many jobs can be done at home? J Public Econ 189:104235

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dittus PJ, Michael SL, Becasen JS, Gloppen KM, McCarthy K, Guilamo-Ramos V (2015) Parental monitoring and its associations with adolescent sexual risk behavior: a meta-analysis. Pediatrics 136(6):e1587–e1599

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dong E, Du H, Gardner L (2020) An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time. The Lancet infectious diseases, 20(5), 533–534

  • Dubois C, Lambertini L, Wu Y (2022) Gender effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Swiss labor market. Swiss J Econ Stat 158(1):1–29

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duchini E, Van Effenterre C (2022) School schedule and the gender pay gap. J Hum Resour https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.0121-11431R2

  • Elsaesser C, Russell B, Ohannessian CM, Patton D (2017) Parenting in a digital age: a review of parents’ role in preventing adolescent cyberbullying. Aggress Violent Beh 35:62–72

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Engzell P, Frey A, Verhagen MD (2021) Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Proc Natl Acad Sci 118(17):e2022376118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022376118

  • Fairlie RW, Couch K, Xu H (2021) The evolving impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender inequality in the US Labor Market: the COVID Motherhood Penalty (no. w29426). National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w29426

  • Felfe C, Lechner M, Thiemann P (2016) After-school care and parents’ labor supply. Labour Econ 42:64–75

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Finseraas H, Hardoy I, Schøne P (2017) School enrolment and mothers’ labor supply: evidence from a regression discontinuity approach. Rev Econ Househ 15(2):621–638

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fitzpatrick MD (2010) Preschoolers enrolled and mothers at work? The effects of universal prekindergarten. J Labor Econ 28(1):51–85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flood S, King M, Rodgers R, Ruggles S, Warren JR, Westberry M (2022) Integrated public use microdata series, current population survey: Version 10.0 [dataset]. IPUMS, Minneapolis. https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V10.0

  • Fuchs-Schündeln N, Krueger D, Kurmann A, Lale E, Ludwig A, Popova I (2021) The fiscal and welfare effects of policy responses to the Covid-19 school closures (No. w29398). National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w29398

  • Fuchs-Schündeln N, Krueger D, Ludwig A, Popova I (2022) The long-term distributional and welfare effects of Covid-19 school closures. Econ J 132(645):1647–1683

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Furman J, Kearney MS, Powell W (2021) The role of Childcare challenges in the US Jobs Market Recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic (No. 28934). National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w28934

  • Gambaro L, Marcus J, Peter F (2019) School entry, afternoon care, and mothers’ labour supply. Empir Econ 57:769–803

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gathmann C, Sass B (2018) Taxing childcare: effects on childcare choices, family labor supply, and children. J Labor Econ 36(3):665–709

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gelbach JB (2002) Public schooling for young children and maternal labor supply. Am Econ Rev 92(1):307–322

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Geyer J, Haan P, Wrohlich K (2015) The effects of family policy on maternal labor supply: combining evidence from a structural model and a quasi-experimental approach. Labour Econ 36:84–98

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glauber R (2008) Race and gender in families and at work: the fatherhood wage premium. Gend Soc 22(1):8–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glauber R (2018) Trends in the motherhood wage penalty and fatherhood wage premium for low, middle, and high earners. Demography 55(5):1663–1680

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldhaber D, Kane TJ, McEachin A, Morton E, Patterson T, Staiger DO (2022) The consequences of remote and hybrid instruction during the pandemic (No. w30010). National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w30010

  • Goux D, Maurin E (2010) Public school availability for two-year olds and mothers’ labour supply. Labour Econ 17(6):951–962

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halloran C, Jack R, Okun JC, Oster E (2021) Pandemic schooling mode and student test scores: evidence from US States (No. 29497). National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w29497

  • Hansen B, Sabia JJ, Schaller J (2022) Schools, job flexibility, and married women's labor supply: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic (No. w29660). National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w29660

  • Havnes T, Mogstad M (2011) Money for nothing? Universal child care and maternal employment. J Public Econ 95(11–12):1455–1465

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heggeness ML (2020) Estimating the immediate impact of the COVID-19 shock on parental attachment to the labor market and the double bind of mothers. Rev Econ Househ 18(4):1053–1078

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hill NE (2015) Including fathers in the picture: a meta-analysis of parental involvement and students’ academic achievement. J Educ Psychol 107(4):919

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hill NE, Wang MT (2015) From middle school to college: developing aspirations, promoting engagement, and indirect pathways from parenting to post high school enrollment. Dev Psychol 51(2):224

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jaume D, Willén A (2021) The effect of teacher strikes on parents. J Dev Econ 152:102679

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kleven H, Landais C, Søgaard JE (2019) Children and gender inequality: evidence from Denmark. Am Econ J: Appl Econ 11(4):181–209

    Google Scholar 

  • Knoester C, Eggebeen DJ (2006) The effects of the transition to parenthood and subsequent children on men’s well-being and social participation. J Fam Issues 27(11):1532–1560

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koppa V, West JD (2021) School reopenings, COVID-19, and employment. COVID-19, and employment. Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt5r67b4rc, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.

  • Kuhfeld M, Soland J, Tarasawa B, Johnson A, Ruzek E, Liu J (2020) Projecting the potential impact of COVID-19 school closures on academic achievement. Educ Res 49(8):549–565

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Larsen L, Helland MS, Holt T (2022) The impact of school closure and social isolation on children in vulnerable families during COVID-19: a focus on children’s reactions. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 31(8):1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-021-01758-x

  • Lee SYT, Park M, Shin Y (2021) Hit harder, recover slower? Unequal employment effects of the COVID-19 shock (No. w28354). National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w28354

  • Lee EK, Parolin Z (2021) The care burden during COVID-19: a national database of child care closures in the United States. Socius 7:23780231211032028

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre P, Merrigan P (2008) Child-care policy and the labor supply of mothers with young children: a natural experiment from Canada. J Labor Econ 26(3):519–548

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lendon JP, Santibanez TA, Singleton JA, Lee JT (2021) Confidence in COVID-19 vaccination of children aged 12–17 years old, by Sociodemographic factors and adult respondents’ vaccination status and intent –Household pulse survey, United States, August 18-September 13, 2021. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/coverage/covidvaxview/pubs-resources/confidence-covid19-vaccination-children.html#ref-01. Accessed Dec 2021

  • Leonhardt M (2020) Lack of school and child care could mean losing ‘a generation of working parents. CNBC Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/06/lack-of-school-and-child-care-may-push-some-parents-out-of-workforce.html. Accessed July 2021

  • Lofton O, Petrosky-Nadeau N, Seitelman L (2021) Parents in a pandemic labor market. San Francisco, CA: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2021-04

  • Lundberg S, Rose E (2000) Parenthood and the earnings of married men and women. Labour Econ 7(6):689–710

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lushin V, Jaccard J, Kaploun V (2017) Parental monitoring, adolescent dishonesty and underage drinking: a nationally representative study. J Adolesc 57:99–107

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martínez C, Perticará M (2017) Childcare effects on maternal employment: evidence from Chile. J Dev Econ 126:127–137

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michelmore K, Pilkauskas N (2021) Tots and teens: how does child’s age influence maternal labor supply and child care response to the earned income tax credit? J Labor Econ 39(4):895–929

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller S (2021) Remote workers expect pay to reflect their locations. SHRM Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/compensation/pages/remote-workers-expect-pay-to-reflect-their-locations.aspx. Accessed Nov 2022

  • Mongey S, Pilossoph L, Weinberg A (2020) Which workers bear the burden of social distancing? No. w27085. National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w27085

  • Montenovo L, Jiang X, Rojas FL, Schmutte IM, Simon KI, Weinberg BA, Wing C (2020) Determinants of disparities in covid-19 job losses. No. w27132. National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w27132

  • Murnane RJ, Reardon SF, Mbekeani PP, Lamb A (2018) Who goes to private school? Long-term enrollment trends by family income. WERA Educational J 40:1–64

  • Musaddiq T, Stange KM, Bacher-Hicks A, Goodman J (2021) The pandemic’s effect on demand for public schools, homeschooling, and private schools (no. w29262). National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w29262

  • National Conference of State Legislatures (2021) COVID-19: Essential workers in the States. Retrieved from https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/covid-19-essential-workers-in-the-states#:~:text=Workers%20in%20the%20following%20settings,supply%20stores%20and%20liquor%20stores. Accessed Oct 2023

  • Nemitz J (2015) The effect of all-day primary school programs on maternal labor supply. SSRN Electron J. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2706505. (Available SSRN 2706505)

  • Nollenberger N, Rodríguez-Planas N (2015) Full-time universal childcare in a context of low maternal employment: quasi-experimental evidence from Spain. Labour Econ 36:124–136

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • OECD (2011) Doing better for families. OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264098732-en

  • Padilla-Romo M, Cabrera‐Hernández F (2019) Easing the constraints of motherhood: the effects of all‐day schools on mothers’labor supply. Econ Inq 57(2):890–909

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parolin Z, Lee E (2021) Large socio-economic, geographic and demographic disparities exist in exposure to school closures. Nature Human Behaviour Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01087-8

  • Paull G (2008) Children and women’s hours of work. Econ J 118(526):F8–F27

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Posadas J, Vidal-Fernandez M (2013) Grandparents’ childcare and female labor force participation. IZA J Labor Policy 2:1–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Price BM, Wasserman M (2023) The summer drop in female employment (No. w31566). National Bur Econ Res https://www.nber.org/papers/w31566

  • Rho HJ, Brown H, Fremstad S (2020) A basic demographic profile of workers in frontline industries. Cent Econ Policy Res 7(10):1–10.

  • Russell L, Sun C (2020) The effect of mandatory child care center closures on women’s labor market outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Covid Economics: Vetted Real-Time Papers Issue 62:124–154

    Google Scholar 

  • Shore SH (2010) For better, for worse: Intrahousehold Risk-sharing over the business cycle. Rev Econ Stat 92(3):536–548

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shure N (2019) School hours and maternal labor supply. Kyklos 72(1):118–151

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stattin H, Kerr M (2000) Parental monitoring: a reinterpretation. Child Dev 71(4):1072–1085

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tedeschi T (2020) The mystery of how many mothers have left work because of school closings. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/upshot/mothers-leaving-jobs-pandemic.html

  • US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2021) Employment characteristics of families summary. Retrieved from  https://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm. Accessed Oct 2021.

  • Weinshenker M (2015) The effect of fatherhood on employment hours: variation by birth timing, marriage, and coresidence. J Fam Issues 36(1):3–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wentzel KR, Russell S, Baker S (2016) Emotional support and expectations from parents, teachers, and peers predict adolescent competence at school. J Educ Psychol 108(2):242

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zamarro G, Prados MJ (2021) Gender differences in couples’ division of childcare, work and mental health during COVID-19. Rev Econ Househ 19(1):11–40

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zanella G (2017) How does grandparent childcare affect labor supply? IZA World of Labor. https://doi.org/10.15185/izawol.337

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University, Hulbert Hall, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA

    Kairon Shayne D. Garcia

  2. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Benjamin W. Cowan

Authors
  1. Kairon Shayne D. Garcia
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Benjamin W. Cowan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kairon Shayne D. Garcia.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

None.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appendix

Appendix

Fig. 1
figure 1

Average percentage of school and childcare facility closures in CPS sample with county identifiers according to Parolin and Lee (2021) school closure database and Lee and Parolin (2021) childcare facility closure database, April 2020 & 2021 and September 2020 & 2021

Full size image
Table 10 Summary statistics of individual characteristics used as control variables
Full size table
Table 11 OLS regressions of labor market outcomes on combined school and childcare facility closures, January 2020-December 2021, excluding self-employed
Full size table
Table 12 OLS regressions of labor market outcomes on combined school and childcare facility closures, January 2020-December 2021, female, by youngest child’s age
Full size table
Table 13 OLS regressions of labor market outcomes on combined school and childcare facility closures, January 2020-December 2021, male, by youngest child’s age
Full size table
Table 14 OLS regressions of labor market outcomes on combined school and childcare facility closures, self-employed
Full size table
Table 15 OLS regressions of labor market outcomes on combined school and childcare facility closures, January 2020-December 2021, with leads and lags of closures
Full size table
Table 16 OLS regressions of labor market outcomes on combined school and childcare facility closures, with seasonal dummies
Full size table
Table 17 OLS regressions of labor market outcomes on combined school and childcare facility closures, with summer months
Full size table
Table 18 OLS regressions of labor market outcomes on combined school and childcare facility closures, using 75% closure cutoff
Full size table
Table 19 OLS regressions of labor market outcomes on school closures, using Burbio data, female
Full size table
Table 20 OLS regressions of labor market outcomes on school closures, using Burbio data, male
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Garcia, K.S.D., Cowan, B.W. Childcare Responsibilities and Parental Labor Market Outcomes During the COVID-19 Pandemic. J Labor Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-024-09355-y

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-024-09355-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation