How do parental resources early in life affect children's health and schooling outcomes? We address this question by exploiting the so-called speed premium (SP) in the Swedish parental leave (PL) system. The SP grants mothers higher PL benefits for the subsequent child without the need to...

This paper provides quasi-experimental evidence on the impact of paid leave legislation on fathers' leave-taking, as well as on the division of leave between mothers and fathers in dual-earner households. Using difference-in-difference and difference-in-difference-in-difference designs, we study...

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...

This paper examines the causal effects of a major change in the German parental leave benefits on fertility. I use the unanticipated reform of 2007 to assess how a move from a means-tested to an earnings-related benefit affects higher-order births. By using data from the Mikrozensus, I find that...

Parental leave and child care are important instruments of family policies to improve work– family balance. This paper studies the impact of the substantial change in Germany’s parental leave system on maternal employment. The aim of the reform was to decrease birth-related maternal...

We examine how a paid parental leave reform causally affected families' living arrangements. The German reform we examine replaced a means-tested benefit with a universal transfer paid out for a shorter period. Combining a regression discontinuity with a difference-in-differences design, we find...

Can moving to an earnings-related parental leave system influence children's wellbeing and are heterogeneous effects on parents carried over to the entire family, making special groups of children worse off than others? To answer this question, this study exploits a large and unanticipated...

This paper examines the effects of a major change in German parental transfer system on fertility. I use the largely unanticipated reform of 2007 as a natural experiment to assess how an earnings-dependent parental leave benefit effects higher-order fertility. Given the recent introduction, this...

This paper examines the causal effects of a major change in the German parental leave benefit scheme on fertility. I use the unanticipated reform in 2007 to assess how a move from a means-tested to an earnings-related benefit affects higher-order births. By using the German Mikrozensus 2010, I...

Using data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY-97), we examine the effects of California's paid family leave program (CA-PFL) on mothers' and fathers' use of leave during the period surrounding child birth, and on the timing of mothers' return to work, the...