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 employment breaks by providing more generous parental benefits for a shorter period … childcare slots. Overall, I did not find significant changes in maternal employment during the first three years of motherhood …

accompanied by an employment increase of similar magnitude. To understand the absence of labor supply effects, we examine data on …

The paper documents employment and wage gaps, which arise between mothers and childless women, for a set of 28 European … gap in employment. The impact of the leaves depends, however, on childcare availability: long maternity leaves combined … with high childcare coverage lead to greater employment gap than when the coverage is low. The results do not prove that …