In 1986 German federal parental leave and benefit policy was expanded in several ways, extending the potential duration of leave from six to ten months and paying child-rearing benefits to all new mothers regardless of their employment status before childbirth. The potential duration has...

Matching-type estimators using the propensity score are the major workhorse in active labour market policy evaluation. This work investigates if machine learning algorithms for estimating the propensity score lead to more credible estimation of average treatment effects on the treated using a...

This paper examines the effects of a substantial change in publicly funded paid parental leave in Germany on child development and socio-economic development gaps. For children born before January 1, 2007, parental leave benefits were means-tested and paid for up to 24 months after childbirth....

This paper investigates the association between maternal life satisfaction and the developmental functioning of two- to three-year-old children as well as the socio-emotional behavior of five- to six-year-old children. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), which allows...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this paper analyses the effects of spending part of adolescents' leisure time on playing music or doing sports, or both. We find that while playing music fosters educational outcomes compared to doing sports, particularly so for girls and children...

This paper investigates the average effects of (firm-provided) workplace health promotion measures in form of the analysis of sickness absenteeism and health circles/courses on labour market out­comes of the firms' employees. Exploiting linked employer-employee panel data that consist of rich...