Partial Childcare Relief and Intra-Household Labour Trade-Offs

This paper examines how access to part-day kindergarten affects household labour allocation in Indonesia, a context of low female labour force participation and widespread reliance on family-based care. Exploiting age-based eligibility cutoffs, I implement an instrumental variable strategy to estimate the causal effects of kindergarten enrolment. Enrolment increases maternal labour force participation and working hours, particularly among less-educated, rural, and low-income women. These gains persist even in households with potential kin caregivers, suggesting complementarity between formal and informal care, with no evidence of substantial crowding out. However, improvements in job quality remain limited, likely constrained by the short duration of care available and the rigidity of labour markets. Intra-household adjustments are modest: mothers increase their labour supply while continuing unpaid caregiving, with no changes in decision-making or fertility. Fathers and other adults do not substitute into childcare, while older siblings are more likely to be enrolled in school and less likely to participate in the labour force. These findings highlight both the potential and limits of partial childcare relief: while it eases time constraints, structural barriers continue to limit women’s employment quality and bargaining power.