Abstract
When children have health problems, mothers face a tradeoff between the decision to work to satisfy increased expenses and the decision to stay home to fulfill enlarged caregiving needs, especially for children with chronic conditions. This research used an instrumental variables approach to investigate the labor market consequences of mothers due to burden to care children with health problems. We found mothers’ employment probability increased by 0.9% for every $100 of increased out-of-pocket medical spending, while employment probability fell by 1.0% for every half day of school/day care a sick child missed. By correcting for endogeneity we addressed a potential empirical bias. Analyses by subgroups showed that Hispanic mothers were less likely to work in the labor market with high caregiving burden. We also found that the effects of time burden on labor market outcomes were magnified for black mothers.
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Notes
We used region and MSA to capture differences in childcare prices. Two assumptions were made: (1) the relative differences in childcare costs across regions were consistent over time, and (2) families within the same region were faced with a same set of childcare markets and prices. The geographic variables might also capture the differences in labor market opportunities.
We excluded observations with inapplicable values in key variables such as age of the child and family size. Observations with top-coded imputed hourly wage (HRWG1X) were deleted, and those who were not ascertained of their wage were excluded. We excluded children who were age 18 or older. We also excluded children in the Sample Child component who were under 3 years old because MEPS did not collect missed school days among this age group. We deleted observations with mothers who were younger than age 18 (AGE1X), with over 90 h of work per week (HOUR1), and with negative family income. We also excluded 451 observations in which children and mothers reported in different racial and ethnic groups in order to avoid multicollinearity when the race and ethnicity of both children and mothers were included in the model. We also excluded missing values of missed school days.
We converted all the income and expenditure values into 2007 US dollars.
Missed school days in MEPS “include any time when a half day or more of school (or day care) was missed because of a physical illness or injury, or a mental or emotional problem.” (MEPS questionnaire—disability days section: http://meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/survey_comp/hc_survey/2006/DD105.htm). The values for missed school days included 0.5 and positive integers. To use count data modeling, we counted the number of half days that a child missed school each year. MEPS only collected missed school day information for those who were three or older.
Based on 2016 US National Compensation Survey, 64% of the private sector workers had paid sick leave. Only 30% of part-time workers and 27% of low wage workers (i.e., average wage within the lowest 10% category) in the private sector had access to paid sick days, whereas 76% of full-time workers and 87% of high wage workers (i.e., average wage within the highest 10 percent category) had access.
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Zan, H., Scharff, R.L. The Effects of Children’s Health on Mothers’ Employment. J Fam Econ Iss 39, 297–309 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-017-9552-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-017-9552-5