Geographical access to childcare and mothers' labour-force participation

Abstract

This article addresses the question whether geographical access to institutionalized childcare influences mothers’ labour-force participation in the Netherlands. The conceptual framework of the article is based on a time-geographic perspective on female labour-force participation. According to this perspective, women are faced with severe day-to-day space-time constraints that form a spatial barrier to labour-force participation. It is argued that, for many mothers with pre-school aged children, access to employment opportunities is partly determined by geographical access to childcare facilities. Using data from the Netherlands Housing Demand survey and a detailed measure of geographical access to childcare, it is shown that, for mothers with young children, the probability of being engaged in paid employment increases as the number of day-care slots per 100 children in the residential area increases. In the regression model, the effect of access to childcare on mothers’ labour-force participation is estimated after individual, household, and local labour market characteristics are controlled for.