Philip Merrigan

Child‐Care Policy and the Labor Supply of Mothers with Young Children: A Natural Experiment from Canada

In 1997, the provincial government of Québec, the second most populous province in Canada, initiated a new child‐care policy. Licensed child‐care service providers began offering day‐care spaces at the reduced fee of

Down and out: estimating the relationship between mental health and unemployment

5.00 per day per child for children aged 4. By 2000, the policy applied to all children not in kindergarten. Using annual data (1993–2002) drawn from Statistics Canadas Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, the results show that the policy had a large and statistically significant impact on the labor supply of mothers with preschool children.

Dynamic labour supply effects of childcare subsidies: Evidence from a Canadian natural experiment on low-fee universal child care

We utilized a unique dataset of Montreal residents to estimate the relationship between employment and mental health, controlling for endogeneity. We applied a maximum likelihood, simultaneous equation generalized probit model to estimate jointly the determinants of an individuals latent index of employability and their mental health as measured by the Psychiatric Symptom Index (PSI). The likelihood function was adjusted to account for the fact that individuals were sampled based on their employment status, and also for the fact that repeated observations of individuals in different periods were used in the analysis. We found tangible beneficial effects of mental health on employability. In addition, employment appears to improve mental health. The ML estimates of the endogenous relationship between employment and mental health indicate that OLS estimates are biased upwards, but the effects of unemployment on deteriorating mental health are not spurious.

Lone Female Headship and Welfare Policy in Canada

This paper shows that a temporary incentive to join the labor market or to work more can also produce substantial life-cycle labor supply effects. On September 1997, a new childcare policy was initiated by the provincial government of Quebec, the second most populous province in Canada. Licensed and regulated providers of childcare services began offering day care spaces at the subsidized fee of

The Impact of Welfare Benefits on the Conjugal Status of Single Mothers in Canada: Estimates from a Hazard Model

5 per day per child for children aged 4. In successive years, the government reduced the age requirement, created new childcare facilities and spaces, and paid for the additional costs entailed by this low-fee policy. No such important policy changes for preschool (including kindergarten) children were enacted in the nine other Canadian provinces over the years 1997 to 2004. Using annual data drawn from Statistics Canadas Survey on Labour and Income Dynamic and a difference-in-differences quasi experimental methodology, the paper estimates the dynamic labor supply effects of the program. The results demonstrate that the policy had long-term labor supply effects on mothers who benefited from the program when their child was less than 6. A striking feature of the results is that they are driven by changes in the labor supply of less educated mothers.

Childcare Policy and Cognitive Outcomes of Children: Results from a Large Scale Quasi-Experiment on Universal Childcare in Canada

The principal qualifying condition for welfare in Canada, unlike the US, is financial need - there are no demographic criteria. We use a time-series of annual, national cross-sections for the period 1981 through 1993 to estimate a model of lone-female headship. Our findings do not support the hypothesis that welfare benefit levels for one-parent and two-parent families are important determinants of the likelihood that a Canadian woman is a lone mother. In all models with provincial fixed effects, the coefficients for welfare benefits are small, statistically insignificant and often of the unexpected sign. We do find that the probability that a woman is a lone mother is generally associated in the expected fashion with her earnings capacity and the earnings capacity of her potential male partner, and with her age and schooling.

Weekly employee hours, weeks worked and intertemporal substitution

This paper focuses on the determinants of the likelihood of a remarriage (marriage) for female heads with children. Using retrospective data from Statistics Canadas 1990 Family History Survey the study attempts to identify which socioeconomic characteristics of single mothers are conducive to conjugal union formation (formal or informal). Particular attention is given to external time-varying economic covariates so as to disentangle the impact they exert on single mothers propensity to start living with a (new) partner. The empirical analysis is carried out using a proportional hazards model which permits the estimation of the effects of various covariates on the hazard of exiting single parenthood. The most striking result is the strong effect of provincial welfare benefits on conjugal union formation. However the analysis reveals that single motherhood far from representing a final state remains a transitory situation for a majority of women. (EXCERPT)

Impact of Early Childhood Care and Education on Children's Preschool Cognitive Development: Canadian Results from a Large Scale Quasi-Experiment

Effects of a low-fee universal childcare policy, initiated in Quebec, the second most populous province in Canada, on the cognitive development of preschool children are estimated with a sample of 4- and 5-year-olds (N=8,875; N=17,154). In 1997, licensed and regulated providers of childcare services began offering daycare spaces at the reduced fee of

The Evolution of the Returns to Education for 21- to 35-Year-Olds in Canada and across Provinces: Results from the 1991-2006 Analytical Census Files

5 per day per child for children aged 4. By 2000, the low-fee policy applied to all children aged 0 to 59 months (not in kindergarten). The study uses 6 cycles of biennial data drawn from Statistics Canadas National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (1994-2004) and quasi-experimental estimation methods to provide evidence that the policy had substantial negative effects on preschool childrens Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores. The negative effects are found to be stronger for children with mothers who have lower levels of education.

Characteristics of Companies Targeted by Social Proxies: An Empirical Analysis in the Context of the United States

Abstract We show that the representative consumer model fits the aggregate consumption and employment data well if a choice of work is allowed both at the intensive and extensive margins. The structural preference parameters recovered from the estimation of the Euler equations of the model are economically meaningful and the null hypothesis of the overidentifying restrictions implied by our model is far from being rejected. We find that the shares in preferences associated with leisure time in the weeks off and in the workweeks are quite large and about equal. Our estimates also uncover relatively large intertemporal substitution elasticities.