We use cross-national data on 26 EU countries to assess how much children and the responsibilities related to them contribute to the gender wage gap, and how institutional elements - especially family policies - affect this relationship. Our analysis is based on a decomposition that reveals what...

The paper documents employment and wage gaps, which arise between mothers and childless women, for a set of 28 European countries. The role of family policies in explaining these inequalities is then examined by looking at a single policy as well as childcare and leave policies interaction. The...

We examine how much children and responsibilities related with them contribute towards the divergence of men's and women's wages, and consequently, to the formation of the gender wage gap. To derive the relative contribution of gender specific wage inequalities caused by the parenthood to the...

Using German administrative data from the 1960s onward, this paper (i) examines the long-term evolution of child-related gender inequality in earnings and (ii) assesses the impact of family policies on this inequality. We present three sets of findings. First, child penalties (i.e., the...

Having children has a sizeable impact on women's labour outcomes, but not on men's. The differential effects of children by gender are referred to as child penalties, and are now documented in many countries. In this paper, we exploit the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults to...

The explicit costs of raising a child have grown over the past several decades. Less well understood are the implicit costs of having a child, and how they have changed over time. In this paper we use longitudinal administrative data from over 70,000 individuals in the Synthetic SIPP Beta to...

The explicit costs of raising a child have grown over the past several decades. Less well understood are the implicit costs of having a child, and how they have changed over time. In this paper we use longitudinal administrative data from over 70,000 individuals in the Synthetic SIPP Beta to...

We formalize and estimate the dynamic marginal efficiency cost of redistribution (MECR) in the spirit of Okun’s “leaky bucket”. We analyze the MECR of an income-contingent childcare subsidy program and the income tax within the German context, using a dynamic structural...

We formalize and estimate the dynamic marginal efficiency cost of redistribution (MECR) in the spirit of Okun’s “leaky bucket” to compare the MECR of an income-contingent childcare subsidy program and of the income-contingent tax and transfer schedule. We set up a dynamic structural model...

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...