Over the last decades many OECD countries introduced parental leave regulations in order to counteract low and decreasing birth rates. In general, these regulations aim at making parenthood more attractive and more compatible with a working career, especially for women. The recent German...

The introduction of the German parental leave benefit (Elterngeld) applied to all children born on January 1st, 2007 or later. The new Elterngeld considerably changed the amount of transfers to families during the first two years postpartum. We show that the incentives created by using a cut-off...

Increasing mothers’ labor supply is a key policy challenge in many OECD countries. Germany recently introduced a generous parental benefit that allows for strong consumption smoothing after childbirth and, by taking into account opportunity costs of childbearing, incentivizes working women to...

This study analyzes the effect of fathers' parental leave-taking on the time fathers spend with their children and on mothers' and fathers' labor supply. Fathers' leave-taking is highly selective and the identification of causal effects relies on within-father differences in leave-taking for...

Germany introduced a new mandatory insurance for long-term care in 1995 as part of its social security system. It replaced a system based on means tested social welfare. Benefits from the long-term care insurance are not means tested and depend on the required level of care. The insurance...

We explore the impact of successful job search after childbirth on mothers’ labor market careers. Using a bounding approach and administrative data, we find strong heterogeneity in the returns to leaving the pre-birth employer. Moving to a new employer after childbirth leads to an increase in...

Over the last decades fertility rates have decreased in most developed countries, while female labour force participation has increased strongly over the same time period. To shed light on the relationship between women's fertility and employment decisions, we analyse their transitions to the...

Having a child out of wedlock used to be associated with shame and scorn. This is mostly not the case anymore in the western world. Therefore, freed from social sanctions, single motherhood has become an additional family-choice alternative for women, along with marriage and childlessness. Yet,...

This paper examines the causal effect of a change in the nomination scheme of the city manager from appointment by the local council to election by the citizens on urban development policies. Using the fact that the timing of the reform was as good as random in municipalities of the German state...

The behavioural response with respect to actuarial adjustments in the German public pension system is analysed. The introduction of actuarial adjustments serves as a source of exogenous variation to estimate discrete time transition rates into retirement. The analysis is conducted on...