Panel Paper:
Publicly Provided Preschool and Maternal Labor Supply: Evidence from Three Head Start Natural Experiments
Thursday, November 7, 2019
I.M Pei Tower: Terrace Level, Columbine (Sheraton Denver Downtown)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
This paper provides new evidence that federal provision of the low-income preschool program, Head Start, leads to increased labor force attachment among single mothers. There has been a sustained interest in understanding how the low-income preschool program Head Start affects participating children. However, the scope of the program is likely to influence the decisions of other family members. For a low-income mother, access to Head Start likely provides a massive childcare cost subsidy, which might influence her labor supply decisions. Any impacts on maternal labor supply might prove an additional channel through which Head Start affects children’s outcomes. To identify the impact of Head Start on the work decisions of single mothers, we will exploit variation from three natural experiments. First, we exploit the substantial funding and enrollment expansion to Head Start in the 1990s that varied over time and across metropolitan areas to measure labor supply responses. We use the Current Population Survey to compare mothers with age-eligible children to mothers with children below the age threshold. On average, these Head Start expansions are associated with a 2 percentage point increase in the employment rate of single mothers, which would imply that about 40 percent of the mothers who gain access to the program enter the labor force. To strengthen the external validity of our findings, we will examine two additional natural experiments. Using the Head Start Impact Study randomized control trial between 2002 and 2008, we have examined the impact of Head Start on the labor supply of unmarried mothers. Preliminary results that are undergoing disclosure process suggest access to Head Start allows single mothers to increase their labor supply, and these effects appear to be largest when the woman does not have younger children or when Head Start offers full day programing. We are also in the process of evaluating the Head Start rollout during the 1960s using child eligibility and variation in the staggered rollout across geography to identify effects. We find that a maternal labor supply response to childcare subsidies is not exclusive to one decade but is empirically observed across cohorts and time. Overall, our findings demonstrate that the implicit childcare subsidy provided through Head Start, allows low-income mothers with young children to increase labor force attachment. Viewing publicly provided early childhood education programs like Head Start as a bundle of family-level treatments can perhaps shed new light on the short run impacts, mid run fade out, and long run improvements associated with Head Start.
