Can moving to an earnings-related parental leave system influence children's well-being and are heterogeneous effects on parents carried over to the entire family, making special groups of children worse off than others? To answer this question, this study exploits a large and unanticipated...

To explore single mothers' labor market participation we analyze specific circumstances and dynamics in their life courses. We focus on the question which individual and institutional factors determine both professional advancement and professional descent. Due to dynamics in women's life course...

This paper quantifies the life-cycle incidence of key family policy measures in Germany. The analysis is based on a novel dynamic microsimulation model that combines simulated family life-cycles for a base population from the 2009 wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) with a...

This paper evaluates the impact of a massive expansion of after-school programs (ASPs) on the labor market participation of mothers with primary school children in the West German context of relatively low full-time employment rates. Using an instrumental variables approach we exploit regional...

The 2008 alimony reform in Germany considerably reduced post-marital and caregiver alimony. We analyze how individuals adapted to these changed rulings in terms of labor supply, the intra-household allocation of leisure, and marital stability. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and...

Female labor market activity is dependent on the presence and the age of a child, but how do the determinants develop in magnitude and significance with the child's age? Using German SOEP data from 1991 to 2006 for mothers with young children, the change in maternal labor supply when the child...

This study investigates how the duration of child care leave taken by mothers and fathers relates to changes in couples’ division of housework and child care after postnatal labour market return in Germany. It explores whether take-up of child care related leave may impact the gender division...

The effects of childbirth on future labor market outcomes are a key issue for policy discussion. This paper implements a dynamic treatment approach to estimate the effect of having the first child now versus later on future employment for the case of Germany, a country with a long maternity...

In a simple 2-period model of relative income under uncertainty, higher comparison income for the younger cohort can signal higher or lower expected lifetime relative income, and hence either increase or decrease well-being. With data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British...

Homeownership rates are very different across European countries. They range from below 50% in Germany to over 80% in Greece, Spain or Ireland. However the differences lie not only in the overall homeownership rates but also in its structure, and this is the focus of this paper. Its aim is to...