Many developed countries currently consider a move towards a universal child care program. The challenge in assessing the case for universal child care programs is that the evidence base is scarce. We analyze the staged expansion of subsidized, universally accessible child care in Norway. Our...

Gender stereotypes are well established also among women. Yet, a recent literature suggests that learning from other women experience about the effects of maternal employment on children outcomes may increase female labor force participation. To further explore this channel, we design a...

We provide a novel interpretation of the estimated treatment effects from evaluations of parental leave reforms. Accounting for the counterfactual mode of care is crucial in the analysis of child outcomes and potential mediators. We evaluate a large and generous parental leave extension in...

In this paper we develop an overlapping generations model in which child care matters for human capital accumulation. We investigate whether an increase in labor supply brought about by a reduction in taxes is always associated with a reduction in parental time devoted to children, which...

The paper characterizes the optimal tax policy and the optimal quality of day care services in a OLG model with warm-glow altruism where parental choices over child care arrangements affect the probability that the child becomes a high-skilled adult in a type-specific way. With respect to...

This paper examines the causal effects of a major change in the German parental leave benefits on fertility. I use the unanticipated reform of 2007 to assess how a move from a means-tested to an earnings-related benefit affects higher-order births. By using data from the Mikrozensus, I find that...

We develop a model to study the impact on gender gaps in participation and wages of a liquidity constraint that prevents some households from paying child care. We show that this liquidity constraint generates an inefficiency and amplifies gender gaps in the labour market. In this framework, an...

We examine how a German paid parental leave reform causally affected early childhood living arrangements. The reform replaced a means-tested benefit with a universal transfer paid out for a shorter period. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that the reform increased the...

We investigate the effects of incentivizing early prenatal care utilization on infant health by exploiting a reform that required expectant mothers to initiate prenatal care during the first ten weeks of gestation to obtain a one-time monetary transfer paid after childbirth. Applying a...

Using Austrian and Danish administrative data, we examine the impacts of parenthood on mental health. Parenthood imposes a greater mental health burden on mothers than on fathers. It creates a long-run gender gap in antidepressant prescriptions of about 93.2% (Austria) and 64.8% (Denmark). These...