Author

Abby Letocha

Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Mathematics

First Advisor

Dr. KimMarie McGoldrick

Second Advisor

Dr. William Ross

Abstract

Policies that subsidize childcare have many potential economic benefits such as mitigating the high cost of childcare, incentivizing families to have more children, increasing paid childcare participation, and increasing parental labor supply. In this paper, I focus on the effect of childcare subsidies on maternal labor supply through a tax policy expansion. The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) is the primary federal childcare subsidy in the United States, and it was temporarily expanded in 2021 under the American Rescue Plan Act. This expansion increased the generosity of the credit and made it fully refundable for the 2021 tax year. I test whether this expansion affected mothers’ hours worked and find a small correlation between the credit expansion and hours worked.

Included in

Mathematics Commons

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