Publicly-Funded Early Care and Education Programs and Mothers’ Time Use

• In Event: Federal and State Investments in Early Childhood and Parent Outcomes

Abstract

Publicly-funded early care and education (ECE) programs—child-care subsidy, Head Start, and pre-kindergarten—increase children in low-income families’ participation in center-based ECE (e.g., Magnuson et al., 2007). By subsidizing nonparental care, these programs free up parents’ time from providing child care. Indeed, prior research suggests that these programs increase mothers’ employment, particularly when ECE is provided full-time and when the subsidy is contingent on working (e.g., Jackson et al., 2025). Less is known, however, about how publicly-funded ECE affects other aspects of mothers’ time, including mothers’ time with children and other activities that might support maternal wellbeing, like sleep. This knowledge is critical for understanding the full benefits of publicly-funded ECE for children and families. 

This study estimates the effects of public ECE spending on mothers’ time use. Using time-diary data, I examine child-care subsidy and early education (Head Start and public pre-kindergarten) spending separately because these programs have different purposes: the former subsidizes child-care for low-income working families while the latter provides early education regardless of parental employment. Because the effects of publicly-funded ECE likely depend on if and what time of the day mothers work, I also examine heterogeneity by mothers’ employment. 

I use time-diary data from the 2003-2019 American Time Use Survey. The sample includes mothers without a college degree, who are most likely eligible for publicly-funded ECE programs, and whose youngest child was 0-5 years old (N=11,573). Outcomes include mothers’ time spent: (1) with her children, including total time child was present regardless of the activity, time spent engaged in primary child-care activities (e.g., caring for and helping children), and time spent engaged in developmentally-supportive activities (e.g., reading, playing), (2) working, (3) sleeping, (4) doing housework, and (5) in leisure activities. I use two-way fixed effects models to regress each outcome on state-level public spending on child care and early education (in $1,000 units), controlling for maternal and household characteristics (e.g., demographics), state-level time-varying characteristics (e.g., unemployment rate), time-diary characteristics (e.g., weekday versus weekend day) and month, year, and state fixed effects. Then, I add interactions to examine whether these associations vary by whether and when mothers worked on the calendar day. Future analyses will add additional years of data (2020-2024) and conduct robustness tests using alternative estimators for continuous treatments (e.g., de Chaisemartin et al., 2025).

Child-care spending was associated with mothers being more likely to work on the calendar day by 1.9 percentage points and with mothers spending 8% less time engaged in developmentally-supportive activities with their young children, regardless of whether and when mothers worked on the calendar day. Early education spending was not associated with mothers’ work but was associated with mothers spending less total time with their child on weekdays, consistent with child(ren) attending a center-based ECE program. There was limited evidence that public ECE spending was associated with mothers’ time in leisure, housework, and sleeping. 

Findings suggest publicly-funded ECE primarily shape mothers’ time with children and in paid work but have limited effects on other time use activities.

Author

• Alejandra Ros Pilarz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author