Empirical Evaluations of Child Care Subsidy Policies

Grant description:

This project proposes to estimate a structural equilibrium model of the U.S. child care sector to use for counterfactual subsidy design, with the goal of finding an optimal cost-neutral subsidy design. The project consists of two parts. First, the author will evaluate the effect of reimbursement rate policies on local maternal labor force participation, child care worker wages, child care prices, and quality of care. Second, the author will use the estimated model to simulate the effects of counterfactual subsidy policies on parent utility, worker wages, mark-ups, and the distribution of quality.