Abstract
This study evaluates whether subsidized access to formal childcare increases women’s economic participation and improves child and household outcomes among low-income families in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The intervention offers eligible women a digital childcare voucher that covers 100% of fees to enroll a child aged 6–48 months in a pre-screened network of affordable childcare providers with spare capacity; voucher payments are administered through a digital platform operated by a major bank. The evaluation is a randomized controlled trial in nine sub-cities, targeting low-income women aged 18–49 who (i) have at least one child aged 6–48 months not currently attending external childcare, (ii) live within walking distance of a participating provider, and (iii) are willing to place a child in formal childcare. Approximately 700 women are expected to be enrolled; provider capacity (42 participating providers; up to 788 childcare slots) creates a supply-constrained setting in which not all eligible women can be served. For each provider catchment area, eligible rosters include roughly twice as many candidates as available slots, and women are randomly assigned after baseline surveys to treatment (voucher offer) or control (no offer). Randomization is stratified by childcare-provider catchment area and refugee vs host-community status. The primary estimand is the intention-to-treat effect of voucher offers; treatment-on-the-treated effects will be estimated secondarily by instrumenting actual childcare enrollment with assignment. Primary outcomes are women’s employment status, hours worked, and earnings; maternal psychological wellbeing (WEMWBS); early child development (CREDI scores for voucher-eligible children); and older siblings’ schooling outcomes (attendance and EGRA scores for selected grades). Attrition will be reported by treatment status and, if differential, Lee bounds will be computed for primary outcomes; standard errors will be clustered at the childcare-provider catchment level.