Subsidized childcare is a key instrument to support maternal employment in most OECD countries. Using a major reform implemented in Luxembourg in 2009, I study the effects of expanding access to subsidized childcare on the employment decisions of women in a context where childcare is universal and heavily subsidized, but is limited by capacity constraints. The identification strategy relies on temporal variation across age groups of children. In response to the reform, the employment rate of mothers increased by 3 percentage points, and their working time grew by 1 h per week. This effect hides the difference between children’s ages, as mothers of the youngest children are found to be more responsive to the reform than mothers of children in primary education. Studying heterogeneous effects reveals a differential impact of the reform with regard to prior employment status.

在大多数经合组织国家，儿童保育补贴是支持孕产妇就业的重要手段。利用 2009 年在卢森堡实施的一项重大改革，我研究了在托儿服务普遍且获得大量补贴但受能力限制的情况下，扩大获得补贴托儿服务的机会对女性就业决策的影响。识别策略依赖于儿童年龄组的时间变化。为应对改革，母亲的就业率提高了3个百分点，每周工作时间增加了1小时。这种影响掩盖了儿童年龄之间的差异，因为发现最小孩子的母亲比小学教育中的孩子的母亲对改革更敏感。