After-School Care and Parents’ Labor Supply

Does the after-school care provision promote mothers’ employment and thus help to foster gender equality in the labor supply? We address this question by exploiting variation in cantonal (state) regulations of after-school care provision in Switzerland. To establish exogeneity of cantonal regulations with respect to employment opportunities and preferences of the population, we restrict our analysis to confined regions along cantonal borders. While no impact of the after-school care provision on parents’ overall employment exists, we find a positive impact on mothers’ full-time employment