Re-examination of the encouraging effect of childcare centers on maternal employment in Japan

This paper reexamines the effect of availability of childcare centers on maternal employment in Japan. Existing literature shows that there exist no or extremely small effects, focusing only on the availability of childcare centers licensed by the government. However, non-licensed centers have become available tremendously in big cities, and we need to examine the existence of the encouraging effect, taking account of the availability of non-licensed daycare centers. In order to reexamine the effect, we conducted an original survey in Osaka, one of the largest cities in Japan. We first show that, once controlled for maternal past employment status, observed household characteristics and labor market conditions, neither licensed or non-licensed daycare centers raise the probability of mothers starting working after childbirth. However, increases in the availability of daycare centers which supply a certain kind of nursing services, such as a care for ill children, can shorten the non-working period for mothers and raise maternal employment rate. The results also indicate that non-licensed daycare centers significantly increase maternal full-time employment rate when the child is 1.5 years old, and that this encouraging effect is different by services provided by daycare centers. On the other hand, the encouraging effects by licensed or non-licensed daycare centers are not found for mothers in part-time jobs.