Taking advantage of a reform that made Chile's most popular conditional cash transfer program substantially more generous, I study its impact on mothers' labor supply using a difference-in-difference strategy. Previous research has focused on these effects near the inauguration of CCTs, never...

Although new mothers are more likely than ever to be in the labour force, the time around childbirth is a dynamic one, with women quitting work altogether or changing jobs to accommodate the demands of their infants. The passage of Family and Medical Leave legislation during the 1980s and early...

This paper studies the effects of Covid-19 related daycare and school closures on gender role attitudes toward maternal employment in Germany. We compare women and men with dependent children to those without children one year after the outbreak of the pandemic. Using data on gender role...

UK government policy encourages mothers of young children in low-income families to enter or return to work, via tax credit subsidies and support for childcare. Maternal employment is seen a central plank in the campaign against child poverty, both because it raises income immediately and...

Western countries differ greatly in the extent to which single mothers participate in the labour market. Using LIS data for 15 countries, I propose and estimate a simple structural model of labour supply that incorporates the main variables that influence the work decision for single mothers....

In this paper, we evaluate the effects of free pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs on the labor force participation (LFP) of mothers. We use variation in pre-K rules across all US states, including income eligibility requirements in some states. To estimate the causal effects of access to pre-K on...

Is maternal employment beneficial or harmful for child development? Maternal employment generates income, which is needed to provide core inputs for children's health and education. However, maternal employment comes at the cost of time spent with children, which is also a critical input into...

We investigate the role of employment in explaining changes in the mental health of single mothers compared to partnered mothers and single childless women during the period of welfare reform in the UK. We employ a time allocation framework to explore if reductions in benefit income led to a...

Compared with other European countries, the Italian labour market stands out for the low level of both female participation and fertility. In this paper we focus on the employment patterns of Italian mothers around the time of childbirth. Our hypothesis is that the difficulties involved in...

We explore how access to Head Start impacts maternal labor supply. By relaxing child care constraints, public preschool options like Head Start might lead mothers to reallocate time between employment, child care, and other activities. Using the 1990s enrollment and funding expansions and the...