Childcare Deserts and Scientists' Career Advancement
For decades, the United States grappled with a childcare shortage that has left American families struggling to secure quality care, compromising both children's development and parental career progress. Here I investigate whether US scientists' career advancement is associated with workplace childcare availability. I construct a longitudinal database of childcare facilities and their capacities spanning the last twenty years. Leveraging the biennial survey of US scientists and engineers sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), I uncover that over half of US scientists employed at universities and research institutions work in childcare deserts, that is, areas where the supply of childcare falls significantly short of demand. Based on hand collected data, over 86% centers operated or affiliated with Top 50 US institutions by R&D spending have a waiting list that is one year or even longer.
Despite similar exposure to childcare deserts, the career consequences for male and female scientists differ starkly. Women scientists with young children (under six years old within the first six years post PhD) working in childcare deserts are 5.2 percentage points less likely to obtain tenure, while no significant association is observed for men with young children on average. Meanwhile, I observe no association between childcare deserts and tenure outcomes for scientists without children, regardless of gender. I also observe no association between other labor availability, such as in health, retail, and restaurant sectors, and tenure outcome regardless of gender or parenthood, indicating the relationship observed could be causal. While reduced available work hours partly explain this disparity, there are likely other factors, such as increased fatigue and frequent work disruptions, that could also contribute. Overall, these findings highlight the critical role of expanding childcare availability to enhance research productivity and to reduce the tenure gender gap in science.
Jun Li
Jun Li is a Professor of Technology and Operations at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. She conducts research in empirical operations management and business analytics spanning areas across revenue management and pricing, healthcare management, supply chain risks, and public sector operations as well as improving the wellbeing of children and young adults. She won the 2015 INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Practice Award, the 2020 INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section Award, the 2022 MSOM Young Scholar Prize, Poets & Quants 40 Under 40 MBA Professors, the Management Science Best Publication award and the Responsible Operations Management Best Publication award, etc. She serves as a Department Editor at Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and an Associate Editor at Management Science and Operations Research. She holds a Ph.D. in Managerial Economics from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Tsinghua University, China.