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...

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...

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...

Despite changing gender norms, few fathers decide to take parental leave after the birth of a child, and when they do, their leave spells are substantially shorter compared to mothers. This study examines how paternal leave-taking is affected by two key features of leave policies: flexibility in...

This study examines the effect of two recent parental leave reforms in Austria that allow parents to choose leave schemes with varying duration. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the introduction of more flexible scheme choices led mothers to take, on average, 1-2 months less...

We study how fathers' time impacts children's human capital using the introduction of earmarked paternity leave in Sweden. We use administrative data on parents' leave uptake and children's educational outcomes in a difference-in-discontinuities design, exploiting the plausibly random timing of...

This chapter reviews the literature on the causal effects of policies on fertility. It focuses on evidence from experiments and quasi-experiments in low fertility contexts, including studies from Europe, Northern America, Oceania and Asia. Making no a priori restrictions on policy type, the...

We study how children's socio-emotional skills and well-being in adolescence are affected by an increase in the duration of parental care during infancy. Exploiting a Danish reform that extended paid parental leave in 2002 and effectively delayed children's entry into formal out-of-home care, we...

Social norms and attitudes towards gender roles have been shown to have a large effect on economic outcomes of men and women. Many countries have introduced policies that aim at changing gender stereotypes, for example fathers' quota in parental leave schemes. In this paper, we analyze whether...

Social norms and attitudes towards gender roles have been shown to have a large effect on economic outcomes of men and women. Many countries have introduced policies that aim at changing gender stereotypes, for example fathers' quota in parental leave schemes. In this paper, we analyze whether...