We draw lessons from existing work and our own analysis on the effects of parental leave and other interventions aimed at aiding families. The outcomes of interest are female employment, gender gaps in earnings and fertility. We begin with a discussion of the historical introduction of family...

The passage of Title IX, the 1972 Education Amendments to the Civil Rights Act, expanded high school athletic opportunities to include girls, revolutionizing mass sports participation in the United States. This paper analyzes high school athletic participation in the United States and how sports...

This paper exploits an exogenous shift in the trade policy in India to study the impact of industrialization on son preference. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that households are more likely to have a male child in regions with higher trade openness relative to regions with...

In this paper, I assess whether earnings-dependent maternity leave positively impacts fertility and narrows the baby gap between highly educated (high-earning) and less-educated (low-earning) women. I exploit a major maternity leave benefit reform in Germany that considerably increased the...

This paper exploits an exogenous shift in the trade policy in India to study the impact of industrialization on son preference. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that households are more likely to have a male child in regions with higher trade openness relative to regions with...

In countries with strong employment protection laws it is often considered to be unwise to hire a woman in childbearing age because she might get pregnant. However, such labour demand e ects of job protection measures related to maternity leave are often rather anecdotal. To provide analytical...

We draw lessons from existing work and our own analysis on the effects of parental leave and other interventions aimed at aiding families. The outcomes of interest are female employment, gender gaps in earnings and fertility. We begin with a discussion of the historical introduction of family...

We use a difference-in-differences model with individual fixed effects to evaluate a 1999 Spanish law granting employment protection to workers with children younger than 6 who had asked for a shorter workweek due to family responsibilities. Our analysis shows that well- intended policies can...

This paper examines the effect of the introduction of a 1982 maternity benefit program on childbearing, employment and marital stability in the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The program included one year of partially paid leave and a small cash payment at birth. We...

We develop a model to study the impact on gender gaps in participation and wages of a liquidity constraint that prevents some households from paying child care. We show that this liquidity constraint generates an inefficiency and amplifies gender gaps in the labour market. In this framework, an...