A BARGAIN AT ANY PRICE - CHILD-CARE COSTS AND WOMENS EMPLOYMENT

This paper examines how three dimensions of child care costs affect wo men's labor supply: (1) women's perceptions of the price of substitute care, (2) the amount of money that parents spend on child care, and ( 3) the availability of relatives for providing care. Tobit analyses, u sing data from the National Child Care Survey 1990, demonstrate that t he cost of care has a multidimensional impact on women's employment. W hat mothers think about price matters: women's perceptions of price ex ert a negative influence on their time spent in paid work. As perceive d minimum price increases, women's labor supply decreases. However, ac tual price, as indicated by predicted expenditures, affects women's la bor supply in a curvilinear fashion with low-priced and high-priced ca re discouraging women's employment time. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.