This paper studies the effect of welfare programs on work incentives and the labor supply of adults in developing countries. The document builds on the experimental evaluations of three programs implemented in rural areas: Mexico’s PROGRESA, Nicaragua’s Red de Protección Social (RPS) and...

This paper proposes a novel method for identifying and visualising key employment obstacles that may prevent individuals from participating fully in the labour market. The approach is intended to complement existing sources of information that governments use when designing and implementing...

While a large share of Disability Insurance recipients are expected to recover, outflow rates from temporary disability schemes are typically negligible. We estimate the disincentive effects of disability benefits on the response to a (mental) health improvement using administrative data on all...

Labor market policies for expecting and new mothers emerged at the turn of the nineteenth century. The main motivation for these policies was to ensure the health of mothers and their newborn children. With increased female labor market participation, the focus has gradually shifted to the...

Workers with fixed-term contracts typically have worse health than workers with permanent contracts. We show that these differences in health translate into a substantially higher (30%) risk of applying for disability insurance (DI) in the Netherlands. Using unique administrative data on health...

A vast literature studies the behavioural impacts of health care reforms, often coming to controversial conclusions. Here we examine the time allocation effects of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obama Care, focusing on two ACA pillars: Medicaid expansion, which increased access to public...

This paper studies the causal effect of giving first birth and how that effect changes by the 2007 reform in parental benefits in Germany. We further investigate how the reform affects the selection of women into motherhood and how that selection effect affects labor market outcomes. A large...

In this paper, we evaluate the effects of free pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs on the labor force participation (LFP) of mothers. We use variation in pre-K rules across all US states, including income eligibility requirements in some states. To estimate the causal effects of access to pre-K on...

The disproportionate impact of children on women's earnings constitutes the primary factor contributing to persistent gender inequality in many countries. This paper examines the multigenerational impact of children and whether the public provision of formal childcare lessens the earnings and...

We study the impact of public child care on mothers' career trajectories, focusing on qualitative dimensions of career choices. Using an event study approach, we find that child care helps mothers to return to the labor market more quickly and that this effect is mainly due to an increase in...