Children cause large earnings drops for mothers but not fathers, a stylized fact known as the "child penalty" that explains a substantial portion of remaining gender income gaps. Can policy reduce the child penalty? We first document how changes in the child penalty over a long time horizon in...

This paper examines gendered labour market consequences of maternity leave and related legislation, across age profiles. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, on individual level panel data, we estimate the effect of an amendment in India’s maternity leave legislation on employment and...

We study how children's socio-emotional skills and well-being in adolescence are affected by an increase in the duration of parental care during infancy. Exploiting a Danish reform that extended paid parental leave in 2002 and effectively delayed children's entry into formal out-of-home care, we...

We study how firms respond to predictable, but uncertain, worker absences arising from maternity and non-work-related sickness leave. Using administrative data on over 1.5 million spells of leave in Brazil, we identify the short-run effects of a leave spell starting on firms' employment, hiring,...

Labor market policies for expecting and new mothers emerged at the turn of the nineteenth century. The main motivation for these policies was to ensure the health of mothers and their newborn children. With increased female labor market participation, the focus has gradually shifted to the...

Since 2004 six states plus Washington, DC have implemented laws that provide paid leave benefits to workers caring for family members who have a disability or serious medical condition. Focusing on the most established state programs-California and New Jersey-this paper investigates whether paid...

A child's family structure is a fundamental determinant of future well-being, making it essential to understand how public policies affect the involvement of fathers. In this paper, we exploit a reform of the German parental leave system - which increased mother's income and reduced legal...

Parents spend considerable sums investing in their children's development, with their own time among the most important forms of investment. Given well-documented effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) on maternal labor supply, it is natural to ask how the EITC affects other time...

I study the effect of parental leave duration on maternal health in the short- to long-run leveraging variation in parental leave duration induced by three Austrian policy reforms from 1990 to 2000. Using rich administrative data and a regression discontinuity framework, I find a hump-shaped...