1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«On September 1, 1997, a new childcare policy was initiated by the provincial government of Québec, the second most populous province in Canada. [...] In this paper, we use this Canadian ’natural experiment’ to [...] test the hypothesis that childcare subsidies can also cause changes in the labour supply of mothers when the policy is no longer contemporaneously effective, that is when all the mother’s children are in school.» (pp.490-491)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
Data provided by Statistics Canada’s Longitudinal Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID)

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse staistique

3. Résumé

«In September 1997, the government of Québec implemented a lowfee childcare policy which has been enlarged over the years in terms of coverage (by age of child) and spaces, to become a truly universal childcare program. [...] The Québec experiment provides a unique opportunity to identify the effects of childcare subsidies given the scale of the program and the amount of resources dedicated by the provincial government. [...] This paper examined if Québec’s universal childcare policy had long-term impacts, taking into account its time-limited nature. The results support the hypothesis that this policy effectively had life-cycle labour supply effects on mothers who benefited from the program when their child was less than 6. These effects, measured in terms of labour force participation, annual weeks worked, and annual hours are estimated to be strong and significant only for less educated mothers (no post-secondary education). [...] Thus, our results suggest that a timelimited policy directed to all mothers with young children has dynamic effects over time. More interestingly, these effects only pertain to mothers who have not post-secondary education and whose attachment to the labour market is traditionally weaker than that of mothers with higher education.» (pp.500-501)