We investigate the changes in women's participation patterns across 15 EU countries over the last 20 years using individual data from ECHP and EUSILC databases. Our findings reveal a role of social policies and institutional factors that is stronger than what has so far been assessed. Labor...

Women contribute disproportionately to household production, especially in Southern European countries. As a consequence of population aging assistance to elderly parents, rather than child care, has become a prevalent activity in home-production services. Immigrant labor has increasingly become...

We provide causal evidence that children's school schedules contribute to the persistence of the gender pay gap between parents. Historically, French children have had no school on Wednesdays. In 2013, a reform reallocated some classes to Wednesday mornings. Exploiting variations in the...

In most industrialized countries, more people than ever are having to cope with the burden of caring for elderly parents. This paper formulates a model to explain how parental care responsibilities and family structure interact children's mobility characteristics. A key insight we obtain is that...

We employ data from the three most recent Chinese population censuses to consider married, urban women's labor force participation decisions in the context of their families and their residential locations. We are particularly interested in how the presence in the household of preschool and...

This paper adopts a psycho-economic approach, based on the "Demonstration Effect" hypothesis, to analyze the effects that the presence of children has on the time devoted to elder care. We combine the approach of the Social Cognitive Theory and a three-generation altruism model. Using the 2003...

We analyse how the financial support for long-term elderly care affects the level of household savings. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, we investigate the 2002 Scottish reform, which introduced free formal personal care for all the elderly aged 65 and above residing in Scotland. Our...

This paper explores the causal effect of volunteer work providing daily assistance to the elderly on elderly mortality. To identify the causal effect, I exploit the earthquake that occurred in midwestern Japan in 1995 as a natural experiment inducing exogenous variation in the level of...

Economists and sociologists have proposed arguments for why there can exist wage penalties for work involving helping and caring for others, penalties borne disproportionately by women. Evidence on wage penalties is neither abundant nor compelling. We examine wage differentials associated with...