Hours of Paid Work Among Single and Partnered Mothers in Australia: How Childcare Package Matters

Abstract

Research has established that families in developed countries commonly combine multiple sources of childcare. Yet, families’ childcare packages and their association with on maternal labour force participation are under-researched, and the few existing empirical studies are primarily descriptive or use cross sectional data. We add to the existing literature by theorizing and testing the relationships between family type, childcare package and mothers’ hours of paid work. To do so, we use 10 waves of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) panel survey and estimate panel data random-effects regression models which account for unobserved person-specific unobserved heterogeneity influencing work hours. Our results indicate that mothers in Australia who use mixed childcare packages complete more hours of paid work than mothers using other packages, but the reasons for this association are different among single and partnered mothers. For single mothers the most important characteristic of mixed care packages appears to be their flexibility, while for partnered mothers, mixed childcare increases employment hours by maximizing the hours of childcare available to them.