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...

Worldwide governments discuss how to increase maternal labor market participation and to reduce the child penalty, i.e. labor market earnings losses after child birth. This study analyses the long run effects of a German paid parental leave reform, which aims to increase maternal labour market...

Earmarked paternity leave has been introduced in an attempt to increase fathers' involvement in child rearing and to achieve gender equality in the labor market and at home. So far well-being effects of such policies are unexplored. This paper takes a first step in that direction by studying the...

This paper examines whether parental marriage confers educational advantages to children relative to cohabitation. We exploit a dramatic marriage boom in Sweden in late 1989 created by a reform of the Widow’s Pension System that raised the attractiveness of marriage compared to cohabitation to...

The big five personality traits develop over a person's lifetime. There is some suggestive evidence that major life events - such as getting married, being fired from a job, and having children - affect personality. However, these associations cannot be interpreted as causal. This is the first...

In this paper, we use 2008-2013 American Community Survey data to update and further probe Dahl and Moretti's (2008) son preference results, which found evidence that having a female first child increased the probability of single female headship and raised fertility. In light of the substantial...

We examine the relationship of child gender with family and economic outcomes using a large dataset from the Polish Household Budgets' Survey (PHBS) for years 2003-2009. Apart from studying the effects of gender on family stability, fertility and mothers' labor market outcomes, we take advantage...

We examine the relationship of child gender with family and economic outcomes using a large dataset from the Polish Household Budgets' Survey (PHBS) for years 2003-2009. Apart from studying the effects of gender on family stability, fertility and mothers' labor market outcomes, we take advantage...

Despite changing gender norms, few fathers decide to take parental leave after the birth of a child, and when they do, their leave spells are substantially shorter compared to mothers. This study examines how paternal leave-taking is affected by two key features of leave policies: flexibility in...

This study examines the effect of two recent parental leave reforms in Austria that allow parents to choose leave schemes with varying duration. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the introduction of more flexible scheme choices led mothers to take, on average, 1-2 months less...