Much of the increase in female labor force participation in the post-war period has come from the entry of married women with young children. Accompanying this change has been a rise in cultural acceptance of maternal employment. We argue that the concurrent S-shaped rise in maternal...

Labor force participation rates of mothers in Austria and Germany are similar, however full-time employment rates are much higher among Austrian mothers. In order to find out to what extent these differences can be attributed to differences in the tax transfer-system, we perform a comparative...

Labor force participation rates of mothers in Austria and Germany are similar, however full-time employment rates are much higher among Austrian mothers. In order to find out to what extent these differences can be attributed to differences in the tax transfer system, we perform a comparative...

When estimating the determinants of child care participation, the simultaneity in mothers' decision to work and in the decision to use child care is a major challenge. In this study, we provide evidence on the determinants of institutional child care use accounting for the endogeneity of...

The increased demand for a more equal parental sharing of the responsibilities for children has led many countries to reconstruct their parental leave systems so to provide stronger incentives for fathers to participate in childcare. Father's quotas are becoming widely spread across Europe. This...

This study analyzes the effect of child care costs on the labor supply of mothers with preschool children in Germany using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (2002). Child care costs are estimated on the basis of a sample selection model. A structural household utility model, which is...

This paper explores a novel mechanism of gender identity formation. Specifically, we explore how the work behavior of a teenager's own mother, as well as that of her friends' mothers, affect her work decisions in adulthood. The first mechanism is commonly included in economic models. The second,...

We provide a novel interpretation of the estimated treatment effects from evaluations of parental leave reforms. Accounting for the counterfactual mode of care is crucial in the analysis of child outcomes and potential mediators. We evaluate a large and generous parental leave extension in...

We assess the role of child care in the welfare to work transition using an unusually large and comprehensive data base. Our data are for Massachusetts, a state that began welfare reform in 1995 under a federal waiver, for the period July 1996 through August 1997. We find that both the nature of...

This study is the first to estimate mother's marginal willingness to pay (MWP) for job amenities directly. Its identification strategy relies on German maternity leave length. The key aspect of the maternal leave framework is that mothers can decide whether and when to return to their guaranteed...