This article investigates the effects of an increase in paid parental leave — twelve months instead of six months — on children’s long-term life satisfaction. The historical setting under study, namely the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), allows us to circumvent problems of...

This article investigates the effects of an increase in paid parental leave -- twelve months instead of six months -- on children's long-term life satisfaction. The historical setting under study, namely the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), allows us to circumvent problems of selection...

This article investigates the effects of an increase in paid parental leave - twelve months instead of six months - on children's long-term life satisfaction. The historical setting under study, namely the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), allows us to circumvent problems of selection of...

This article investigates the effects of an increase in paid parental leave - twelve months instead of six months - on children's long-term life satisfaction. The historical setting under study, namely the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), allows us to circumvent problems of selection of...

This study investigates the impact of an increase in paid parental leave from five to twelve months on children’s long-term outcomes. Our setting, former East Germany, features high labor market participation of mothers and universal supply of standardized childcare. It thus mitigates...

This paper studies the long-term impact of a paid parental leave reform in former East Germany in 1986 on maternal physical and mental health and subjective well-being. The reform extended paid leave for first-time mothers by six months to a maximum of twelve months. I use representative survey...

Child care and education are important inputs in the human capital production function. The research of Nobel prize winner James Heckman shows that skills are built from the early childhood on and increase the returns of later educational inputs, in short: skill begets skill. Therefore, it is...

This paper studies the long-term impact of a paid parental leave reform in former East Germany in 1986 on maternal physical and mental health and subjective well-being. The reform extended paid leave for first-time mothers by six months to a maximum of twelve months. I use representative survey...

This paper studies the long-term impact of a paid parental leave reform in former East Germany in 1986 on maternal physical and mental health and subjective well-being. The reform extended paid leave for first-time mothers by six months to a maximum of twelve months. I use representative survey...

Without a school degree, students can have difficulty in the labor market. To improve the lives of upper-secondary school dropouts, German states instituted a school reform that awarded an interim degree to high-track students upon completion of Grade 9. Using retrospective spell data on school...