Who uses child care, for what purpose, and what is their experience of balancing work and family life?

This project identifies who uses which types(s) of child care, at what intensity and at which (monetary) costs. It brings to the surface (potential) bottlenecks in the current child care market and identifies how family characteristics are linked to these bottlenecks by using information on peoples experiences of balancing work and family life combined with information on personal and household characteristics. The project contains a large amount of descriptive statistics from the first two waves of the HILDA data and various limited dependent variable regressions to describe observed choices families make.

Funded by the Australian Government Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS).

The Melbourne Institute contact for this project is Dr Hielke Buddelmeyer.

A final report has been submitted to FaCS in the first quarter of 2005.