Maternal Labour Supply and School Enrolment Laws: Empirical Evidence from Brazilian Primary School Reforms

The relationship between childcare provision and mothers’ labour supply decisions is highly debated due to the potential reverse causality and resultant empirical challenges. We contribute meaningfully to this debate by discussing the effects from a reform on Brazil’s primary education system on maternal labour supply. This reform, which advanced the compulsory children’s enrolment in primary education schools from the age of 7–6, is interpreted as the provision of free childcare. Due to the imperfect compliance of the reform implementation, children’s month of birth is used as an instrumental variable to control for the endogeneity present in any actual school enrolment. We show that the reform presented a positive effect on the labour supply of (1) the Brazilian single mothers and (2) the least educated mothers, increasing their participation in labour market by 12.9 % and furthermore a probability of becoming full time workers by 10.9 %.