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Paper Abstract
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Studies from North America, Europe, and Latin America show that women’s disproportionate
child care responsibilities significantly impede their labor force participation. Yet, some have
questioned whether similar barriers exist in sub-Saharan Africa, where women primarily work in
the informal sector and may receive extensive kin support. To test whether child care obligations
limit African women from engaging in paid work, we conducted a randomized study which
provided subsidized early child care (ECC) to selected mothers living in a slum area of Nairobi,
Kenya. We found that not only are mothers eager to send their children to ECC centers, but also
that women who were given subsidized ECC were, on average, 8.5 percentage points (or over
17%) more likely than those who were not to be employed. This effect rose to over 20 percentage
points among women who actually used the ECC services. Furthermore, working mothers who
were given subsidized ECC were able to work fewer hours than those not given ECC without any
loss to their earnings. These findings provide strong evidence that subsidizing child care for
women in poor urban settings could be a powerful mechanism to improve female labor outcomes
and reduce gender inequalities in Africa.
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Paper Citation
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Clark, Shelley, Caroline Kabiru, Sonia Laszlo, and Stella Muthuri. 2017. “Can Subsidized Early Child Care Promote Women’s Employment?: Evidence from a Slum Settlement in Africa.” GrOW Research Working Paper Series. #5, Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
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Paper URL
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http://grow.research.mcgill.ca/publications/working-papers/gwp-2017-05.pdf
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