Childcare Responsibilities and Parental Labor Market Outcomes During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

A substantial fraction of k-12 schools and childcare facilities in the United States closed their in-person operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. These closures may have altered the labor supply decisions of parents of affected children due to a need to be at home and take care of their children during the school day. In this paper, we examine the impact of school and childcare facility closures on parental labor market outcomes. We test whether COVID-19 facilities closures have a disproportionate impact on parents of children under 18 years old. Our results show that both women’s and men’s work lives were affected by school closures, with both groups seeing a reduction in the likelihood of working, work hours and the likelihood of working full-time. We also find that closures had a corresponding negative effect on the earnings of fathers of children under 18 years old, but not on mothers. These effects are concentrated among parents without a college degree, parents working in occupations that do not lend themselves to telework, and parents without other family members living at home, suggesting that such individuals had a more difficult time adjusting their work lives to school and childcare facility closures.