Miller Ana Corina, O'Reilly Dermot, Wright David
Department of Economics, Queen's Business School, Queen's University Belfast.
Centre for Public Health, Queen's University Belfast.
Int J Popul Data Sci. 2024 Oct 9;9(1):2143. doi: 10.23889/ijpds.v9i1.2143. eCollection 2024.
The trade-off between the costs of childcare provision and the benefits of having an increased proportion of women, particularly women with dependent children, in employment is one of the most taxing social issues for Western governments. In countries like Northern Ireland, the limited subsidised childcare provision for preschool and primary school children has been partially offset by a rise in informal childcare though this has been considerably hard to assess both in terms of magnitude and effect. Using the entire 2011 Census cohort of mothers with children aged 1 to 16 years of age, we argue that co-resident grandparents have a substantial positive impact on maternal labour force participation in Northern Ireland. The presence of a co-resident grandparent was associated with an increase of 3.7 percentage points in employment for single-parent mothers and 2 percentage points for mothers in two-parent households. Mothers with co-resident grandparents report an increase of 2.7 percentage points for a single mother and of 3.7 percentage points for a mother in a two-parent household being in full-time employment than mothers without. Overall, the presence of a co-resident grandparent was associated with at least a 3.2 percentage point increase in labour force participation among mothers with primary-school-age children.
在提供儿童保育服务的成本与提高女性（尤其是有未成年子女的女性）就业比例所带来的益处之间进行权衡，是西方政府面临的最棘手的社会问题之一。在北爱尔兰这样的国家，尽管难以从规模和效果两方面对非正式儿童保育的增长进行评估，但为学龄前儿童和小学生提供的有限补贴儿童保育服务已部分被非正式儿童保育的增加所抵消。利用2011年人口普查中所有1至16岁孩子母亲的完整队列数据，我们认为与孙辈同住的祖父母对北爱尔兰母亲的劳动力参与率有显著的积极影响。与孙辈同住的祖父母的存在，使单亲母亲的就业率提高了3.7个百分点，双亲家庭母亲的就业率提高了2个百分点。与没有与祖父母同住的母亲相比，与祖父母同住的母亲中，单亲母亲全职就业率提高了2.7个百分点，双亲家庭母亲全职就业率提高了3.7个百分点。总体而言，与孙辈同住的祖父母的存在，使有小学适龄子女的母亲的劳动力参与率至少提高了3.2个百分点。
