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High Labor Force Attachment, but Few Social Ties? Life-Course Predictors of Women's Receipt of Childcare Subsidies

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September 2019

Written by: Rachel M. Shattuck

Working Paper Number:

CES-19-26

Abstract

The U.S. federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) childcare subsidy represents the largest source of means-tested assistance for U.S. families with low incomes. The CCDF subsidy aims to help mothers with low incomes gain employment and education, with implications for women's labor force participation, and the wellbeing of their children. Because recipients of the CCDF subsidy are either already employed, or seek the subsidy with the goal of gaining employment or schooling, this group may represent the public assistance recipients who are best able to succeed in the low-wage labor market. However, existing research on the CCDF observes recipients only after they begin receiving the subsidy, thus giving an incomplete picture of whether recipients may select into subsidy receipt, and how subsidy recipiency is situated in women's broader work and family trajectories. My study links administrative records from the CCDF to the American Community Survey (ACS) to construct a longitudinal data set from 38 states that observes CCDF recipients in the 1-2 years before they first received the subsidy. I compare women who subsequently received the CCDF subsidy to other women with low incomes in the ACS who did not go on to receive the subsidy, with a total of roughly 641,000 individuals. I find that CCDF recipients are generally positively-selected on employment history and educational attainment, but appear to have lower levels of social support than non-recipients.

Document Tags and Keywords

Keywords Keywords are automatically generated using KeyBERT, a powerful and innovative keyword extraction tool that utilizes BERT embeddings to ensure high-quality and contextually relevant keywords.

By analyzing the content of working papers, KeyBERT identifies terms and phrases that capture the essence of the text, highlighting the most significant topics and trends. This approach not only enhances searchability but provides connections that go beyond potentially domain-specific author-defined keywords. :
survey, labor, subsidy, welfare, enrollment, poverty, benefit, parent, family, parental, disability, income children, mother

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The model is able to label words and phrases by part-of-speech, including "organizations." By filtering for frequent words and phrases labeled as "organizations", papers are identified to contain references to specific institutions, datasets, and other organizations. :
American Community Survey, Earned Income Tax Credit, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Disclosure Review Board, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Personally Identifiable Information

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