TY - JOUR AU - Baker,Michael AU - Gruber,Jonathan AU - Milligan,Kevin TI - Universal Childcare, Maternal Labor Supply, and Family Well-Being JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 11832 PY - 2005 Y2 - December 2005 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11832 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11832.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Michael Baker Department of Economics University of Toronto 150 St. George Street Toronto, ON M5S 3G7 CANADA Tel: 416/978-4138 Fax: 416/978-6713 E-Mail: baker@chass.utoronto.ca Jonathan Gruber MIT Department of Economics E52-355 50 Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 02142-1347 Tel: 617/253-8892 Fax: 617/253-1330 E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu Kevin S. Milligan Department of Economics University of British Columbia #997-1873 East Mall Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 CANADA Tel: 604/822-6747 Fax: 604/822-5915 E-Mail: kevin.milligan@ubc.ca M2 - featured in NBER digest on 2006-06-01 AB - The growing labor force participation of women with small children in both the U.S. and Canada has led to calls for increased public financing for childcare. The optimality of public financing depends on a host of factors, such as the %u201Ccrowd-out%u201D of existing childcare arrangements, the impact on female labor supply, and the effects on child well-being. The introduction of universal, highly-subsidized childcare in Quebec in the late 1990s provides an opportunity to address these issues. We carefully analyze the impacts of Quebec%u2019s %u201C$5 per day childcare%u201D program on childcare utilization, labor supply, and child (and parent) outcomes in two parent families. We find strong evidence of a shift into new childcare use, although approximately one third of the newly reported use appears to come from women who previously worked and had informal arrangements. The labor supply impact is highly significant, and our measured elasticity of 0.236 is slightly smaller than previous credible estimates. Finally, we uncover striking evidence that children are worse off in a variety of behavioral and health dimensions, ranging from aggression to motor-social skills to illness. Our analysis also suggests that the new childcare program led to more hostile, less consistent parenting, worse parental health, and lower-quality parental relationships. ER -