All-day schools and labour force participation of mothers * a micro-simulation study for Germany

Abstract

"The expansion of all-day schools is currently enjoying a high priority in the political agenda. One of the reasons for this is the poor results of German pupils in the PISA study. This paper is to examine what effect the expansion of all-day schools will have on the labour force participation of mothers of primary-school children. For this we estimate a structural labour supply model in which the costs of the care of children in the afternoons is explicitly taken into account. Our policy simulations show that considerable labour supply effects would be expected if there were an extensive network of all-day schools: the labour force participation of the mothers would rise by 4 percentage points in western and by one percentage point in eastern Germany. The average working time of the mothers would increase by more than 16 percent in western and by 5 percent in eastern Germany. A more realistic scenario, which is currently being striven for implicitly in the federal investment programme 'Future for Education and Care', is the nationwide increase of the provision of places at all-day schools to 30 percent. In this case, according to our calculation, the participation rate would rise by just under one percentage point in western Germany, and the average working time would increase by 4 percent. Smaller effects are expected in eastern Germany since the available supply of places in after-school care facilities and all-day schools there is already more likely to enable both parents to work today than is the case in western Germany." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Beblo, M., Lauer, C. & Wrohlich, K. (2005): Ganztagsschulen und Erwerbsbeteiligung von Müttern. Eine Mikrosimulationsstudie für Deutschland. In: Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung, Vol. 38, No. 2/3, p. 357-372.