Assessing the impact of childcare expansion in Mexico: Time use, employment and poverty

Unpaid care work amounts to an astronomical figure of 2 billion hours per day in the world of which three quarters are performed by women. This reality explains, to a large extent, the little progress that has been seen in reducing gender gaps, as far as employment, wages and use time are concerned. Against this background, the so-called 3R strategy -the Recognition, Reduction and Redistribution of unpaid care work-has been accepted as the main policy intervention towards closing gender gaps (UN Commission on the Status of Women 2014). Based on a measurement method developed by the Levy Institute that combines time and income poverty (called LIMTIP), the authors of this report empirically analyze the net impact on well-being of the expansion of childcare services in Mexico. Specifically, they carry out a comprehensive evaluation with a gender perspective of job creation and income generation, changes in the paid and unpaid workload, and the risk that this may entail in terms of time poverty.