We study the impacts of a policy designed to reward mothers who stay at home rather than join the labor force when their children are under age three. We use regional and over time variation to show that the Finnish Home Care Allowance (HCA) decreases maternal employment in both the short and...

Noch in der frühen Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts dominierte das so genannte Ernährermodell, so dass die Frau nach der Heirat sowie Geburt des ersten Kindes in der Regel hauptverantwortlich für die Kindererziehung sowie Haushaltshaltung war, während der Mann sich auf die Erwerbsarbeit...

This paper presents the results of a randomized study of a home visiting program implemented in Germany for low-income, first-time mothers. A major goal of the program is to improve the participants’ economic self-sufficiency and family planning. I use administrative data from the German...

In Germany, formal child care coverage rates have increased markedly over the past few decades. The expansion in coverage is particularly pronounced for under 3 year-olds. The present paper is concerned with how mothers' mental and physical health is affected by whether they place their child in...

By investigating how locally available early childhood education and care quality relates to maternal employment choices, this study extended the literature which has mostly focused on the importance of day-care availability or costs. We provided differentiated analyses by the youngest child's...

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...

We provide some of the first empirical evidence of maternal and fetal health effects of working during pregnancy by using a unique dataset from the New Jersey Department of Health that includes information not only on pregnancy and birth outcomes but also on maternal employment. We match the...

Data on 2,355 married women from the 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey are used to study how female employment affects fertility in China. China has deep concerns with both population size and female employment, so the relationship between the two should be better understood. Causality...

Recent research has found that maternal employment is associated with worse child performance on tests of cognitive ability. This paper explores mechanisms for that correlation. We estimate models of instrumental variables using a unique dataset, the American Time Use Survey, that measure the...

Recent research has found that maternal employment is associated with an increased risk of childhood obesity. This paper explores mechanisms for that correlation. We estimate models of instrumental variables using a unique dataset, the American Time Use Survey, that measure the effect of...