Child Health and Maternal Work Activity: The Role of Unobserved Heterogeneity

This paper investigates the extent to which child health affects maternal work activity. Estimating this causal relationship is complicated because unobserved heterogeneity that affects a child’s health might also affect the mother’s labor market attachment. Using variables that measure a family’s access to care as instruments, the main finding of this paper is that child health does not appear to be a significant determinant of maternal employment.