Has improved daycare accessibility increased Japan’s maternal employment rate? Municipal evidence from 2000-2010

Over the past decades, female labor force participation in Japan has continued to
expand, accompanied by an improvement in daycare accessibility. This paper quantifies the
daycare effects on employment of mothers with preschool children, analyzing newly constructed
municipality-level data covering 1,758 municipalities for 2000, 2005, and 2010. The results
suggest that 5%-11% of the increase in maternal employment rate during 2000 to 2010 was
attributable to the improvement in daycare accessibility. However, the daycare effects on maternal
employment are quite limited compared with those on enrollments at licensed daycare centers.
Our new evidence suggests that such discrepancy could emanate from the fact that better access
to licensed daycare centers encouraged working mothers to switch from kindergartens.