The Effect of Mandated Child Care on Female Wages in Chile

This paper studies the effect of mandated employer-provided child care on the wages of women hired in large firms in Chile. We use a unique employer-employee database from the country's unemployment insurance (UI) system containing monthly information for all individuals that started a new contract between January 2005 and March 2013. We estimate the impact of the program using regression discontinuity design (RDD) exploiting the fact that child care provision is mandatory for all firms with 20 or more female workers. The results indicate that the monthly starting wages of the infra-marginal woman hired in a firm with 20 or more female workers is between 9 percent and 20 percent less than those of female workers hired by the same firm when no requirement of providing childcare was imposed.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Inter-American Development Bank
Other Authors: María Fernanda Prada
Format: Working Papers biblioteca
Language:English
Published: Inter-American Development Bank
Subjects:Workforce and Employment, Gender Equality, Child Development, C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods, J - Labor and Demographic Economics, Labor Policy;Employability;Policies for gender;Regression discontinuity;Female wages;Mandated benefits,
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0011690
https://publications.iadb.org/en/effect-mandated-child-care-female-wages-chile
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Summary:This paper studies the effect of mandated employer-provided child care on the wages of women hired in large firms in Chile. We use a unique employer-employee database from the country's unemployment insurance (UI) system containing monthly information for all individuals that started a new contract between January 2005 and March 2013. We estimate the impact of the program using regression discontinuity design (RDD) exploiting the fact that child care provision is mandatory for all firms with 20 or more female workers. The results indicate that the monthly starting wages of the infra-marginal woman hired in a firm with 20 or more female workers is between 9 percent and 20 percent less than those of female workers hired by the same firm when no requirement of providing childcare was imposed.