The influence of formal and informal support systems on the labour supply of divorced mothers

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this article, we evaluate the effect of both formal and informal childcare support systems on the post-divorce labour supply of divorced mothers. To this end, we model the change in working hours before and after divorce by using a multilevel approach, estimating the impact of both micro- and macro-level determinants. Although we find empirical evidence for the hypothesis that a country's institutional environment plays an important role in facilitating employment as a strategy for mothers to cope with their financial losses following partnership dissolution, our conclusion is that the change in labour supply is more responsive to the whole of a country's family policies rather than to so-called ‘domain-specific’ indicators of formal and informal childcare provision. Furthermore, our empirical evidence suggests that at the micro-level, formal and informal childcare strategies are connected. The complementary role of informal support systems, facilitating the use of formal childcare, is an important finding from a policy point of view. However, further research will have to make clear which conditions have to be fulfilled in order to help divorced mothers to combine work and care, thus enabling them to mitigate the economic consequences of partnership dissolution.