We use Frenche household data to estimate a structural model of female labor supply and use of paid child care outside the home. Child care costs are found to have little impact on the labor market perticipation decision of mothers. The model is used to study various policy issues. The influence...

Historically, in virtually all developed economies there seems to be clear evidence of an inverse relationship between female labor supply and fertility. However, particularly in the last decade or so, the relationship across countries has been positive: for example countries like Germany, Italy...

The effect of transition from centrally planned to market economies on female employment is unclear a-priori. Many studies have pointed out that the emergence of labour markets created obstacles to but also new opportunities for women’s employment. A frequently mentioned potential explanation...

We find a strong association between family status and labor market outcomes for recent cohorts of West German men in the German Socio-Economic Panel. Living with a partner and living with a child both have substantial positive effects on earnings and work hours. These effects persist in fixed...

This study investigates how maternal employment is related to the outcomes of 10 and 11 year olds, controlling for a wide variety of child, mother and family characteristics. The results suggest that limited amounts of work by mothers benefit youths who are relatively "disadvantaged" and even...

Using a data set from the post welfare reform environment (the 1999 National Survey of America’s Families), this paper investigates the impact of child care subsidies on the standard work (i.e., work performed during the traditional work hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. through Monday and Friday)...

We study the causal effects of changes in parental leave provisions on fertility and return-to-work behavior. We exploit a policy change that took place in 1990 in Austria which extended the maximum duration of parental leave from the child's first to the child's second birthday. As parental...

Using data on MZ (monozygotic, identical) female twins from the Minnesota Twin Registry, we estimate the causal effect of schooling on completed fertility, probability of being childless and age at first birth, using the within MZ twins methodology. We find strong cross-sectional associations...

Mounting evidence shows that self-care produces deleterious consequences for adolescents in the U.S. Since descriptive evidence suggests that maternal employment is the primary explanation for adolescent self-care, maternal employment, it is frequently argued, is harming children. Heretofore,...