This paper examines the causal effects of a major change in the German parental leave benefit scheme on fertility. I …

undesirable, and where there is imperfect fertility control, leading to involuntary childlessness/parenthood. Using an equivalent … consumption approach in the consumption-fertility space, we first show that the identification of the worst-off individuals is not … robust to how the social evaluator fixes the reference fertility level. Adopting the ex post egalitarian social criterion …

This paper examines the effects of a major change in German parental transfer system on fertility. I use the largely …-order fertility. Given the recent introduction, this paper evaluates short-run responses by using data from the German Microcensus …-run fertility responses are less pronounced and vary with potential earnings. The heterogeneity is in line with the structure of …