When Childcare Disappears: Household Labor Supply, Gender Inequality, and Informal Work

When Childcare Disappears: Household Labor Supply, Gender Inequality, and Informal Work | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article When Childcare Disappears: Household Labor Supply, Gender Inequality, and Informal Work Johabed G. Olvera, Guillermo M. Cejudo, Liliana Gonzalez-Viveros This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8982371/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Public childcare can relax household time constraints and strengthen women’s labor market attachment, yet little is known about the consequences of withdrawing such support. This paper examines the labor supply effects of the abrupt 2019 termination of Mexico’s Programa de Estancias Infantiles (PEI), a large-scale childcare subsidy targeting low-income, predominantly informal-sector working mothers. Using a panel of Mexican municipalities from 2017–2019 and exploiting cross-municipal variation in pre-termination PEI exposure, we implement a dose–response difference-in-differences design. Municipalities with higher pre-termination coverage experienced a decline of approximately one hour per week in household labor supply, about 2 percent relative to the pre-reform mean, driven primarily by reduced employment participation rather than hours conditional on work. While average effects are modest, substantial heterogeneity emerges. Labor supply contractions are concentrated among households with children aged 0–2 years, for whom no universal public substitute exists. Effects are markedly larger among female sole providers and informal workers: weekly hours decline by roughly 4 to 5.5 hours among sole-provider women in the informal sector and street vending, and by nearly 7 hours among paid domestic workers with young children. These magnitudes are several times larger than the average treatment effect, revealing how childcare loss interacts with caregiving intensity and occupational precarity to generate disproportionately large labor supply contractions among the most vulnerable women. By analyzing a nationwide policy rollback rather than program expansion, the paper provides new causal evidence on how institutional retrenchment in care provision disproportionately constrains labor supply among vulnerable women and households. Childcare program termination Parental labor supply Gender inequality in care work Labor participation in developing contexts Family time-use dynamics Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files OnlineAppendix.pdf Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-8982371","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":603446027,"identity":"4be38101-80a9-4f18-9797-c0038e00256f","order_by":0,"name":"Johabed G. 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This paper examines the labor supply effects of the abrupt 2019 termination of Mexico\u0026rsquo;s Programa de Estancias Infantiles (PEI), a large-scale childcare subsidy targeting low-income, predominantly informal-sector working mothers. Using a panel of Mexican municipalities from 2017\u0026ndash;2019 and exploiting cross-municipal variation in pre-termination PEI exposure, we implement a dose\u0026ndash;response difference-in-differences design. Municipalities with higher pre-termination coverage experienced a decline of approximately one hour per week in household labor supply, about 2 percent relative to the pre-reform mean, driven primarily by reduced employment participation rather than hours conditional on work. While average effects are modest, substantial heterogeneity emerges. Labor supply contractions are concentrated among households with children aged 0\u0026ndash;2 years, for whom no universal public substitute exists. Effects are markedly larger among female sole providers and informal workers: weekly hours decline by roughly 4 to 5.5 hours among sole-provider women in the informal sector and street vending, and by nearly 7 hours among paid domestic workers with young children. These magnitudes are several times larger than the average treatment effect, revealing how childcare loss interacts with caregiving intensity and occupational precarity to generate disproportionately large labor supply contractions among the most vulnerable women. By analyzing a nationwide policy rollback rather than program expansion, the paper provides new causal evidence on how institutional retrenchment in care provision disproportionately constrains labor supply among vulnerable women and households.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"When Childcare Disappears: Household Labor Supply, Gender Inequality, and Informal Work","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2026-03-12 18:50:06","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8982371/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"472f35d7-a132-4226-9127-b7b415a027da","owner":[],"postedDate":"March 12th, 2026","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-04-28T18:23:14+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2026-03-12 18:50:06","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-8982371","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-8982371","identity":"rs-8982371","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}