Home alone: supervision after school and child behavior

Abstract

As female participation in the labor force continues to grow in the US, so too does reliance on non-parental child care. However, the high cost of child care has impeded the ability of many working mothers to find sufficient child care for their children. As a result, as recently as 1998 over eight million children ages five to 14 spent time without adult supervision on a regular basis in the US. I examine the effect of the lack of adult supervision after school on a panel of school-age children using ordinary least squares and fixed effect estimation. I find that children with adult supervision are less likely to skip school, use alcohol or marijuana, steal something or hurt someone. These findings suggest that expanding after school or child care programs typically geared to preschool-age children to accommodate more school-age children may have important consequences for their human capital development and labor market outcomes later in life.