This paper studies the effect of cultural attitudes on childcare provision, fertility, female labour supply and the gender wage gap. Cross-country data show that fertility, female labour force participation and childcare are positively correlated with each other, while the gender wage gap seems...

This paper investigates how mothers' decision to stay at home with young children affects their subsequent work careers. Identification is based on the introduction of the Cash-for-Care program in Norway in 1998, which increased mothers' incentives to withdraw from the labor market when their...

Several studies have documented a strong correlation in the timing of spouses' retirement decisions. However, considerably less is known about the causal impact of one spouse's retirement incentives on the retirement decision of the other spouse. Before, but not after, 2001 broad categories of...

We apply German Mikrozensus data for the period 1996 to 2004 to investigate the employment status of mothers. Specifically, we ask whether there are behavioral differences between mothers in East and West Germany, whether these differences disappear over time, and whether there are differences...

We study the labor supply effects of a change in child-subsidy policy designed to both increase fertility and shorten birth-related employment interruptions. The reform yields most of the intended effects

Public child care is expected to assist families in reconciling work with family life. Yet, empirical evidence for the relevance of public child care to maternal employment is inconclusive. We exploit the introduction of a legal claim to a place in kindergarten in Germany, which was contingent...

This paper studies the effect of child-care subsidies on parental labour supply. I use variation arising from changes in the municipality-specific supplement to Finnish child homecare allowance to identify the causal effect of subsidies on the labour force participation of parents. The variation...

In a model with endogenous fertility and labor supply three instruments of family policies are analyzed: child benefits, subsidies for external child care, and parental leave payments. We compare the impact on the quantity and quality of children, the secondary earner's labor supply and welfare....

Does after-school care provision promote mothers’ employment and balance the allocation of paid work among parents of schoolchildren? We address this question by exploiting variation in cantonal (state) regulations of after-school care provision in Switzerland. To establish exogeneity of...

Previous studies report a wide range of estimates for how female labor supply responds to childcare prices. We shed new light on this question using a reform that raised the prices of public daycare. Parents respond by reducing public daycare and increasing childcare at home. Parents also reduce...