Essays on Child Care Subsidies

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I review the literature on child care subsidies, discussing three main strands to which I contribute: general equilibrium models of skill investment, estimations of skill accumulation technologies, and evaluations of child care subsidy programs. In the second chapter, I lay out a model of child care subsidies in an environment where one- and two-parent families form endogenously and then altruistically invest in their children's skill, using both their own time and time purchased on the market in the form of child care. I compare welfare gains under three possible designs for a child care subsidy, which differ in the pool of those entitled to receive the subsidy (the eligible). In the third chapter of my dissertation, I go into detail on the estimation of the skill accumulation technologies used by one- and two-parent families to invest in their children. In this section I describe my main data source (the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort), the econometric methods used and point estimates, the implications of my findings for my results, and how my findings compare with those outstanding in the literature.