Children’s Educational Enrollment and Maternal Labor Supply

We examine the impact of a nation-wide reform in South Africa anticipating admission into primary school on children’s school enrollment and mothers’ labor supply. Using Census data and exploiting month-of-birth discontinuities and the before/after variation introduced by the reform, we find a 7pp. increase in school attendance at age 5 but no effect on maternal employment and the type of job held. We conduct a meta-analysis to reconcile our findings with those of previous studies in developing and emerging economies. Results show that the high baseline school enrollment rate in our study context can explain these effects. Heterogeneity analysis across South African districts further corroborates this conclusion.