Child care, female employment and public policy

Recent increased accession of women to the labour market, together with other social transformations, may further raise the demand for child care in Spain. In this paper we examine child care choice from an economic perspective. Our objective is to analyze the determinants that influence the choice of child-care arrangements. To reach this goal, a theoretical model is presented which assumes that families attempt to maximize total utility. Next, three possible econometric models are designed: The first analyzes the demand for external care; the second studies child care choice conditional on using external child care; the third one considers both decisions simultaneously: whether to use external care and which type of child care to use. The model is then applied to the Spanish Time-Use Survey data (INE, 2003)