CHILD-CARE COSTS AS A BARRIER TO EMPLOYMENT FOR SINGLE AND MARRIED MOTHERS

Because women typically serve as primary care providers for their chil dren, female labor force participation behavior is likely to be affect ed significantly by the costs associated with replacing maternal care with nonmaternal care. While some evidence of this phenomenon exists i n the economics literature, discrepancies across studies make it diffi cult to provide conclusive evidence of the employment effects of these child care costs. This paper uses an improved SIPP survey design to p resent new evidence regarding the degree to which child care prices im pede mothers' employment behavior, with additional evidence of the dif ference in these elasticities across marital status, empirical techniq ue, and equation specification. This permits linking this paper to the existing evidence, drawing the conclusion that child care prices impe de mothers' employment behavior significantly, with single mothers exh ibiting less responsiveness in their labor force participation behavio r to child care price changes than married mothers. Generally, these r esults support the basic finding of Ribar (1992), reject the smaller p rice of care elasticities found by Averett et al. (1997), Blau and Rob ins (1988), Connelly (1992), and Tolin (1992), but replicate the lower elasticities found in these papers by changing equation specification s. Also, significant sensitivity in the price elasticity is revealed, particularly with respect to changes in equation specification.