Balancing Work and Childcare : Evidence from COVID-19 School Closures and Reopenings in Kenya
This paper identifies the impact of childcare responsibilities on adult labor supply in the context of COVID-19-related school closures in Kenya. It compares changes in parents’ labor participation after schools partly reopened in October 2020 for...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Washington, DC: World Bank
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/210811646666473975/Balancing-Work-and-Childcare-Evidence-from-COVID-19-School-Closures-and-Reopenings-in-Kenya http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37110 |
| Summary: | This paper identifies the impact of
childcare responsibilities on adult labor supply in the
context of COVID-19-related school closures in Kenya. It
compares changes in parents’ labor participation after
schools partly reopened in October 2020 for households with
children in a grade eligible to return against households
with children in adjacent grades. Using
nationally-representative panel data from World Bank phone
surveys in 2020–21, the findings show that the partial
reopening increases affected adults’ weekly labor hours by
22 percent, with increases concentrated in household
agriculture. The results suggest that school closures
account for over 30 percent of the fall in average work
hours in the first few months after COVID-19 cases were
detected. The effects are driven by changes in household
childcare burdens and child agricultural labor when a
student returns to school. The impacts are not significantly
different by sex of the adult. Although both women and men
increased hours spent on childcare during the pandemic,
women benefited more than men from reductions in childcare
needs, but took on more of the childcare burden when the
returning student was a net childcare provider. The results
highlight the importance of siblings in household childcare
and suggest that policies that increase childcare
availability and affordability could increase adult labor
supply in Kenya. |
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