This report is a part of research project on “A study on systemizing care service : focusing on Dolbom Doumi”. The objective of this report is finding an insight into household choices on paid in-home child-care service and seeking an answer to questions regarding economic support for the newly launched paid in-home care service called Dolbom Doumi.
Using a survey for 1,000 households with at least one child less than 6 years old in Seoul, Incheon, and Kyeongki province, we estimate several demand functions for paid in-home care service and households' choice among child-care service patterns. Major empirical results are as follows: (ⅰ) a household with a young child or a young mother or high income are more likely to use paid in-home child care but interestingly mother's college degree and experience, and the cost for paid in-home care are not significantly associated with the usage of paid in-home child-care service; (ⅱ) when a hourly cost increases by 100%, the hours using paid in-home care service drop by approximately 2.7 hours per week; (ⅲ) a household with a monthly income higher than 5 million won use 3.5 hours more than one with a monthly income less than 5 million won; (ⅳ) regarding a choice for the main child-care service giver, the cost for each service is not found to be significantly associated with choice behavior, which is contradictory to the standard economic theory; (ⅴ) after controlling for the other factors, mother's age and years in experience significantly increase the probability of choosing parental care over the other child-care patterns but the effect of those factors are turns out to smaller in the paid in-home care service equation, which might imply that the decision on using paid in-home care is relatively independent with mother work status; and (ⅵ) when the price of Dolbom Doumi service increases by 100%, a household decreases the demand by 3 hours per day. These findings commonly imply that the demand for the Dolbom Doumi is not much sensitive to the cost, and thus it is difficult to expect to a large rise in women's economic activity participation rate by lowering the cost for Dolbom Doumi although women's part-time employment could be increased by such financial support.
We conclude that the support for paid in-home child-care can be justified in view of fairness with support for child-care in facility in the short-run but ultimately the best way in narrowing the gap in economic unfairness between different child-care service users is extending facility child-care service. ？
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