Public pre-schooling and maternal labour force participation in rural India

Abstract

Mothers from poor families in India have a compelling need to work, but childcare for their young children is a constraint. Public day-care implicit in pre-schooling is provided by India’s largest child development programme, which also provides other services, including supplementary feeding, immunisation and health check-ups. Using logit, covariate matching and village-fixed effects methods, I find that in rural India a mother whose child is receiving any of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) services intensely is 15% more likely to work. Among the various pathways, it seems that this effect is driven mainly by the day-care implicit in pre-schooling for their children. There is also some evidence of child health benefits through immunisation and health check-ups received at the ICDS centre which affect mothers’ likelihood to work.