Abstract: Owing to the rapid ageing of societies, studying the labour market consequences of caring for ill, disabled or frail old-age partners, parents and/or other family members (hereafter: ‘family care’) is of urgent concern. Previous research has mainly concentrated on examining the...

We propose a model of how parents resolve conflicts about sharing the negative short and long-term consequences from parenthood-related career interruptions on earnings. We introduce childcare sharing in a collective model of household behavior with public consumption as in Blundell, Chiappori,...

The share of single mothers is higher in East Germany than in West Germany. Using data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we examine two transmission channels leading to single motherhood, namely out-of-partnership births and separations of couples with minor children. Women in East Germany...

Women experience significant reductions in labor market income following the birth of children, while their male partners experience no such income drops. This "relative child penalty" has been well documented and accounts for a significant amount of the gender income gap. In this paper we do...

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...

We present experimental evidence that enabling access to universal early child care for families with lower socioeconomic status (SES) increases maternal labor supply. Our intervention provides families with customized help for child care applications, resulting in a large increase in enrollment...