The proposed project will identify the criteria women use in selecting alternative forms of care for their preschool-aged children and will elaborate the impact of child care availability and costs women's employment and fertility decisions.
Specific aims i nclude understanding how women search for and select child care once they decide they cannot provide all such care themselves; understanding what constitutes """"""""satisfactory child care at reasonable cost"""""""" to women in a variety of social and economic circumstances; and understanding whether the local availability and cost of alternative forms of child care influence women's labor force participation or hours worked and their reproductive behavior (both of which have potential health consequences). To study these topics, data will be collected from three main sources: (1) A two-stage, area probability sample of women under the age of 40 with a natural, adopted or step child under age six in their care in the Detroit metropolitan area (these women will be interviewed at length about their child care, employment and fertility experiences, plans and attitudes); (2) data collected by the Michigan State Department of Social Services as part of the licensing and monitoring of child care facilities in the state (included is information on location and type of all licensed child care givers in the Detroit area and data on child care costs from a state-wide April, 1984, survey); and (3) data from the Current Population Survey on unemployment in the Detroit area. The collection of objective information on the availability and costs of child care and the linking of this information to information on individual women is one of the project's most important features because it will allow a direct statistical test of the hypothesis that choice of child care method--and indirectly, employment and fertility decisions--is more heavily determined by child care availability and cost than by individual or household characteristics. Other important features of the project include the collection of direct information on a variety of individual-level variables thought to influence child care, employment and fertility decisions, and the development of theoretical and empirical models that link these variables together.
| Mason, K O; Kuhlthau, K (1992) The perceived impact of child care costs on women's labor supply and fertility. Demography 29:523-43 |
