All OECD countries except the United States offer at least four months of paid maternity leave, and the average duration of mandated paid maternity leave has increased steadily from 1970 to the present. There is some evidence that paid leave policies above a certain duration negatively impact...

This study seeks to determine the impact on female labor outcomes of the amendment to the Colombian labor law that extended maternity leave from 12 to 14 weeks (Law 1468 of July 2011). To identify this impact, labor market outcomes of two groups of women with different fertility rates are...

This study examines the effects on workers from the labor-demand response to the costs of mandated maternity and parental leave programs. Japan introduced generous parental leave policies in the 1990s, but for many years, firms still had to pay for the worker's social insurance payments during...

The relationship between the length of paid maternity leave and the proportion of female workers in the private sector is explored using firm-level survey data for 66 mostly developing countries. The paper finds a large, positive, and statistically significant relationship between the two....