Work and family life arrangements differed greatly between the east and west before German reunification in 1990. Since reunification, however, the employment rates of mothers with children requiring childcare have converged. This trend is accompanied by a growing approval of maternal...

Over the last three decades, Spanish female labor force participation (LFP) has tremendously increased, particularly, that of married women. At the same time, the income tax structure, the fiscal treatment of families, policies to reconcile family and work, and the education distribution of...

In 2016, the Polish government introduced a large child benefit, called "Family 500+", with the aim to increase fertility and reduce child poverty. It is universal for the second and every further child and means-tested for the first child. We study the impact of the new benefit on female labor...

This paper examines the effect of an expansion of subsidized early child care on maternal labor market outcomes. It contributes to the literature by analyzing, apart from the employment rate, the adjustment of agreed working hours and especially of preferred working hours. Semi-parametric...

Parental leave and child care are important instruments of family policies to improve work– family balance. This paper studies the impact of the substantial change in Germany’s parental leave system on maternal employment. The aim of the reform was to decrease birth-related maternal...

There are considerable differences in gender unemployment gaps across the EU. We use labor force survey data on 21 countries to perform a series of data decompositions and show that the cross-country variation in gender unemployment gaps is primarily driven by the differences in female labor...

In 1933, the German government introduced the marriage loan for newlyweds, a policy aimed at increasing marriages and births as well as male employment, which entailed a work ban for the wife and sizeable credit deductions for children. This paper illustrates that the policy was rather...

We investigate the importance of various mechanisms by which child care policies can affect life‐cycle patterns of employment and fertility among women, as well as long‐run cognitive outcomes among children. A dynamic structural model of employment, fertility, and child care use is estimated...

This paper explores how inflows of low-skilled immigrants impact the tradeoffs women face when making joint fertility and labor supply decisions. I find increases in fertility and decreases in labor force participation rates among high-skilled US-born women in cities that have experienced larger...

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether parental alcohol consumption leads to a reduction of child welfare. To this end, we analyse whether alcohol consumption decreases parents' time spent looking after children and working. Using the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, we estimate a...