We investigate the impact of delaying the first birth on Italian mothers' labor market outcomes around childbirth. The effect of postponing motherhood is identified using biological fertility shocks, namely the occurrence of miscarriages and stillbirths. Focusing on mothers' behavior around...

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...

This paper explores how inflows of low-skilled immigrants impact the tradeoffs women face when making joint fertility and labor supply decisions. I find increases in fertility and decreases in labor force participation rates among high-skilled US-born women in cities that have experienced larger...

This paper examines evidence on the role of assimilation versus source country culture in influencing immigrant women’s behavior in the United States-looking both over time with immigrants' residence in the United States and across immigrant generations. It focuses particularly on labor supply...

This paper examines evidence on the role of assimilation versus source country culture in influencing immigrant women's behavior in the United States – looking both over time with immigrants' residence in the United States and across immigrant generations. It focuses particularly on labor...

In a model with endogenous fertility and labor supply three instruments of family policies are analyzed: child benefits, subsidies for external child care, and parental leave payments. We compare the impact on the quantity and quality of children, the secondary earner's labor supply and welfare....

Although economic agents routinely face various types of economic uncertainty, their effects are often unclear and hard to assess, in part due to the absence of suitable measures of uncertainty. Because of the numerous and very substantial institutional changes that people in the transition...

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...

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...

Economic theory often assumes that the opportunity costs of having a child and financial constraints have a simultaneous but opposite influence on fertility. This empirical paper aims to test the concomitance of these effects using the answers to an original survey carried out in 2003 amongst...