Child Care Subsidies, Employment Services, and Women’s Labor Market Outcomes in Egypt
This paper provides evidence on constraints to the participation of women in the labour market that have received attention in the literature
Abstract
We provide evidence on two constraints to the participation of women in the labour market that have received sustained attention in the literature:
- high opportunity cost of time due to childcare
- limited access to employment opportunities.
In a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a sample of mothers in urban Egypt, we evaluate two interventions designed to relax these constraints: childcare subsidies and job matching services. We find that neither the subsidies nor the job matching services nor the combination of these interventions increased job search intensity or changed reservation working conditions. These results suggest that in the context of urban Egypt, relaxing these constraints is insufficient to allow women to work.
This research is part of the Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low Income Countries programme.
Citation
Caria, S., Crépon, B., Fadl, N., Krafft, C., Nagy, A., El Behairy, H., Mottaghi, L., Zeitoun, N., El Assiouty, S. (2023). “Child Care Subsidies, Employment Services, and Women’s Labor Market Outcomes in Egypt”. G2LM LIC Working Paper No. 73
Links
Child Care Subsidies, Employment Services, and Women’s Labor Market Outcomes in Egypt