author: Clark, S., Kabiru, C. W., Laszlo, S., & Muthuri, S. year: 2019 title: The Impact of Childcare on Poor Urban Women’s Economic Empowerment in Africa publisher: Demography uri: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00793-3 discipline: sociology country: Kenya period: 2015-2016 maxlength: 12 targeting: explicit group: mothers data: national administrative survey Nairobi Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance System design: experimental method: RCT sample: 738 unit: individual representativeness: subnational, urban causal: 1 # 0 correlation / 1 causal theory: economic empowerment theory limitations: results restricted to 1 year; relatively high attrition rate observation: - intervention: maternity benefits; childcare subsidy institutional: 0 structural: 1 agency: 0 inequality: poverty; gender type: 1 # 0 vertical / 1 horizontal indicator: 0 # 0 absolute / 1 relative measures: employment probability; hours worked findings: subsidy increased employment probability (8.5ppts) for poor married mothers channels: increased ability to work through lower childcare burden direction: 1 # 0 neg / 1 pos significance: 2 # 0 nsg / 1 msg / 2 sg - intervention: childcare subsidy institutional: 0 structural: 1 agency: 0 inequality: poverty; gender type: 1 # 0 vertical / 1 horizontal indicator: 0 # 0 absolute / 1 relative measures: hours worked findings: subsidy decreased hours worked without decreasing income for single mothers channels: allows shifting to jobs with more regular hours direction: 0 # 0 neg / 1 pos significance: 2 # 0 nsg / 1 msg / 2 sg notes: annotation: | An experimental study on the impacts of providing childcare vouchers to poort women in urban Kenya, estimating the impacts on their economic empowerment. The empowerment is measured through disaggregated analyses of maternal income, employment probability and hours worked. It finds that, for married mothers there was a significantly positive effect on employment probability and hours worked, suggesting their increased ability to work through lower childcare costs increasing personal agency. For single mothers, it finds a negative effect on hours worked, though with a stable income. The authors suggest this is due to single Kenyan mothers already working increased hours compared to married mothers, though the effect shows the ability of single mothers to shift to jobs with more regular hours, even if they are not compatible with childcare. Minor limitations of the study are its restriction to effects within a period of 1 year, and a somewhat significant attrition rate to the endline survey.