Female Labor Participation and Mother’s Daycare in Greece Pre- and Post-COVID-19 Pandemic: A Regional Analysis

Abstract

This paper studies the sample of 1,177,794 mothers in Greece who were eligible to apply for and receive a voucher as beneficiaries of the European program Harmonization of family and business life for the period 2011–2022, using financial on/off criteria. This was a European union (EU) subsidized program under the main strategic plan for Growth in Greece, the Partnership agreement for the Development Framework. This paper conducts an ANCOVA analysis to reveal the motives of the participants that led to the progress of the program both pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic. The database comes from all applications submitted online, but confidential data remained undisclosed, restricting the power of the results. Findings uncover the major factor interfering with a mother’s decision to apply prior to COVID-19, namely her family status. However, for the post-COVID period, a mother’s declining age is the major determinant, which shows the increasing uncertainty of women in reproductive age. These findings, along with the low birth rate in Greece, suggest large social unrest, such that a large fraction of women in the workforce would go into labor if they had greater access to subsidized childcare. Regional differences do not seem to affect these results. This analysis might be unique in its nature, as no previous paper has focused on mothers’ characteristics linking them to childcare.