An important feature of parental leave in Norway is that it allows significant sharing of leave between parents. Parents may take 54 weeks of leave and receive 80 per cent of previous earnings or 44 weeks of leave with 100 per cent of earnings, up to a ceiling amount. Nine weeks of total leave...

Female labour force participation is high in Norway but sickness absence rates are higher for women than for men. This may be partly a result of unequal sharing of childcare in the family. In this paper, we consider the effect of paternity leave on sickness absence among women who have recently...

This paper evaluates the impact of a recent Norwegian family policy reform. The reform provides benefits of up to NOK 3000 per month to all families with 1-3 year old children, who do not utilise state subsidised day care centres. We investigate the reform’s effect on parents’ labour force...

Using Norwegian data we find that married women’s education is positively associated with completed fertility, but this relationship becomes insignificant after controlling for husbands’ characteristics. Husbands’ education has a positive effect on women’s fertility. These findings...

Norwegian registry data is used to investigate the location decisions of a full population cohort of young adults as they complete their education, establish separate households and form their own families. We find that the labor market opportunities and family ties of both partners affect these...

Sickness absence has risen over the past years in Norway. One explanation put forward is that a tougher labor market represents a health hazard, while a competing hypothesis predicts that loss of job security works as a disciplinary device. In this analysis we aim to trace a causal impact of...