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Causal Effects of Paternity Leave on Children and Parents
Abstract
In this paper we use a parental leave reform directed towards fathers to identify the causal effects of paternity leave on children’s and parents’ outcomes. We document that paternity leave causes fathers to become more important for children’s cognitive skills. School performance at age 16 increases for children whose father is relatively higher educated than the mother. We find no evidence that fathers’ earnings and work hours are affected by paternity leave. Contrary to expectation, mothers’ labor market outcomes are adversely affected by paternity leave. Our findings do therefore not suggest that paternity leave shifts the gender balance at home in a way that increases mothers’ time and/or effort spent at market work.
... Previous research has shown that fathers who took paternity leave have higher involvement in child-related tasks (Bunning, 2015;Farre & Gonzalez, 2019;Huerta et al., 2013;Tamm, 2019;Wray, 2020). Some studies find a non significant relationship but they focused on indirect indicators of paternal investment, such as working hours or labor market earnings (Cools et al., 2015;Ekberg et al., 2013;Hart et al., 2022). The evidence is scarcer and more mixed about housework. ...
... Uptake of paternity leave is very low when it is not mandatory (i.e., when employers can refuse a request), such as in the US, Australia, and the UK (Bartel et al., 2018;Baum & Ruhm, 2016;Han et al., 2009;Hosking et al., 2010;Huerta et al., 2013;Nepomnyaschy & Waldfogel, 2007;Tanaka & Waldfogel, 2007), while it is higher if leave is mandatory, or short and paid at, or near, income replacement level (Moss, 2015). The implementation of fathers' quotas on parental leave, as in many Nordic countries, has increased leave take-up (Cools et al., 2015;Ekberg et al., 2013;Haas & Hwang, 2008;Hart et al., 2022;Kotsadam & Finseraas, 2011, 2013Rege & Solli, 2013;Sundström & Duvander, 2002), for results from the forerunner countries, i.e., Sweden and Norway; Kotsadam & Finseraas 2013 for Germany; Kotsadam & Finseraas 2019 for Quebec). However, the characteristics of fathers who take paternity leave appear to be relatively similar across different national contexts: they are generally more advantaged, better educated, in higher prestige occupations, and have greater incomes. ...
... Patnaik (2019) shows that, fathers that have been exposed to the introduction of a 2-month leave reserved for fathers in Quebec did no increased their time spent on childcare. Using indirect indicators for fathers' involvement in housework and comparing births before and after the introduction or extension of the paternal quotas in Norway or Sweden, Cools et al. (2015), Hart et al. (2022) and Ekberg et al. (2013) do not find any impact on fathers' labor supply, wages, or taking days off work to look after a sick child. ...
To foster gender equality and involve fathers in parenting, leave-from-work targeted at fathers has been implemented in many countries. In France, until 2021, fathers can avail of a statutory paid paternity leave of 11 working-days that must be taken within 4 months after childbirth. This article estimates the impact of this short-duration and large coverage paternity leave on the gender division of domestic and parental tasks. We measure the effect of paternity leave using the Elfe survey, a national cohort of children born in 2011. We take advantage of the timing of the 2-month survey: some fathers had already taken their leave, while others intended to but had not done so by then. Taking paternity leave leads to a more equal division of several parental tasks. It affects sharing of domestic activities only marginally. The effect on child-rearing tasks is greater for first-time parents and differs by father’s education level. Paternity leave may provide the opportunity to learn how to perform child-related tasks to fathers, and involving them early in parenting.
... comparison to women's time spent on childcare and domestic work was not made. Other research in Germany, found that men who took any paternity leave self-reported an increase in childcare and housework 4 years after their child's birth but employed mothers were still responsible for 77% of household time spent on housework and 73% of childcare time (117). In Norway, Cools et al. (117) found the 1993 introduction of 1 month use-it-or-lose-it paternity leave (typically taken when leave available to women was used up 10 months after birth) did not alter men and women's relative engagement in paid employment (117). ...
... Other research in Germany, found that men who took any paternity leave self-reported an increase in childcare and housework 4 years after their child's birth but employed mothers were still responsible for 77% of household time spent on housework and 73% of childcare time (117). In Norway, Cools et al. (117) found the 1993 introduction of 1 month use-it-or-lose-it paternity leave (typically taken when leave available to women was used up 10 months after birth) did not alter men and women's relative engagement in paid employment (117). Kotsadam and Fineraas (118) found reduced reported conflict over household work and reportedly more male involvement in clothes washing (but not other housework) when children born immediately after Norwegian paternity leave was instituted were 10-12 years old, but did not distinguish between men and women's perceptions of change. ...
... Other research in Germany, found that men who took any paternity leave self-reported an increase in childcare and housework 4 years after their child's birth but employed mothers were still responsible for 77% of household time spent on housework and 73% of childcare time (117). In Norway, Cools et al. (117) found the 1993 introduction of 1 month use-it-or-lose-it paternity leave (typically taken when leave available to women was used up 10 months after birth) did not alter men and women's relative engagement in paid employment (117). Kotsadam and Fineraas (118) found reduced reported conflict over household work and reportedly more male involvement in clothes washing (but not other housework) when children born immediately after Norwegian paternity leave was instituted were 10-12 years old, but did not distinguish between men and women's perceptions of change. ...
Women’s¹ lifelong health and nutrition status is intricately related to their reproductive history, including the number and spacing of their pregnancies and births, and for how long and how intensively they breastfeed their children. In turn, women’s reproductive biology is closely linked to their social roles and situation, including regarding economic disadvantage and disproportionate unpaid work. Recognizing, as well as reducing and redistributing women’s care and domestic work (known as the ‘Three Rs’), is an established framework for addressing women’s inequitable unpaid care work. However, the care work of breastfeeding presents a dilemma, and is even a divisive issue, for advocates of women’s empowerment, because reducing breastfeeding and replacing it with commercial milk formula risks harming women’s and children’s health. It is therefore necessary for the interaction between women’s reproductive biology and infant care role to be recognized in order to support women’s human rights and enable governments to implement economic, employment and other policies to empower women. In this paper, we argue that breastfeeding–like childbirth–is reproductive work that should not be reduced and cannot sensibly be directly redistributed to fathers or others. Rather, we contend that the Three Rs agenda should be reconceptualized to isolate breastfeeding as ‘sexed’ care work that should be supported rather than reduced with action taken to avoid undermining breastfeeding. This means that initiatives toward gender equality should be assessed against their impact on women’s ability to breastfeed. With this reconceptualization, adjustments are also needed to key global economic institutions and national statistical systems to appropriately recognize the value of this work. Additional structural supports such as maternity protection and childcare are needed to ensure that childbearing and breastfeeding do not disadvantage women amidst efforts to reduce gender pay gaps and gender economic inequality. Distinct policy interventions are also required to facilitate fathers’ engagement in enabling and supporting breastfeeding through sharing the other unpaid care work associated with parents’ time-consuming care responsibilities, for both infants and young children and related household work.
... не были введены непередаваемые (эксклюзивные) отцовские отпуска с почти полной компенсацией зарплаты, которые при неиспользовании сгорали . В результате в Норвегии доля отцов, берущих отпуск по уходу за ребенком, выросла с 4 до 39 % [Cools et al., 2015], в Швеции -до 76 %, Португалии -до 77 % . ...
... Многочисленные исследования подтверждают положительную корреляцию между долей отцов в отпуске по уходу за ребенком и уровнем рождаемости, особенно вторых детей Lacalle-Calderon et al., 2019]. Среди других позитивных последствий участия отцов в уходе за ребенком называют полноценное психоэмоциональное и физическое развитие детей [Стручкова, 2012] и их когнитивных способностей [Cools et al., 2015], улучшение здоровья и продолжительности жизни мужчин за счет склонности к самосохранительному поведению [Римашевская и др., 2016]. Отмечается снижение заработных плат мужчин после выхода из отпуска по уходу за ребенком на 2-5 % , что свидетельствует о том, что отцы после выхода из этого отпуска продолжают уделять значительное время семье. ...
... This pattern exacerbates gender inequality and highlights the importance of encouraging fathers' participation in parental leave to promote a more equal division of labour. Previous studies suggest that active paternal involvement, supported by parental leave policies, not only benefits child development but also enhances fathers' satisfaction with family life (69,70). In addition, some previous studies have found positive effects of fathers' leave on mothers' employment (71)(72)(73)(74). ...
... Regarding fathers' work outcomes after taking parental leave, studies have reported that fathers worked fewer hours or used flexible work arrangements more often after taking parental leave (Arnalds et al. 2022;Wanger and Zapf 2022). Tamm (2019), however, found that this reduction in working hours was restricted to the period that parents were eligible for parental leave benefits, and also, Cools et al. (2015) found no effect of leave taking on work hours. Lee (2023a) found divergent reactions from South Korean fathers after taking leave, with some fathers changing their work hours to care hours, while other fathers reverted to their work-centric lifestyle. ...
This systematic literature review assesses two decades of the literature on paternity and parental leave for fathers. We developed a conceptual framework that broadens the understanding of why fathers (do not) use paternity and/or parental leave, and the outcomes of men’s leave uptake for fathers, families, and society. Drawing on Bourdieu’s social reproduction theory, we use social, economic, and cultural capital as sensitizing concepts in our analysis. Regarding contextual circumstances, paternity and parental leave most often appear to be used by fathers with higher levels of economic, cultural, and social capital, and with a stronger father identity. With regard to consequences of taking leave, the literature suggests that fathers are not only affected at the micro level (e.g., in their paternal involvement) but also at the meso level (relationship with partner and children) with (potential) consequences at the societal level. We welcome family researchers to further develop and test our conceptual framework when studying the contexts and consequences of paternity leave and parental leave for fathers.
... • changing gender relations in the home and expanding gender equality in the labour market (Kotsadam and Finseraas, 2011;Rehel, 2013;Patnaik, 2019); • expanding ideals of masculinity and fatherhood to include caregiving roles (Nepomnyaschy and Waldfogel, 2007;Rehel, 2013;Huerta et al, 2014); and • mitigating falling fertility rates and an impending demographic crisis in a country (Cools et al, 2015;Korsvik and Warat, 2016). ...
Do countries with greater women’s political representation offer better policy protections for male workers with family caregiving responsibilities via stronger paternity leave policies? Using data from the Global Care Policy Index project on a diverse set of 30 countries’ paternity leave policies, we find that the share of women’s representation in their country’s national parliament is strongly and positively correlated with more robust and longer paternity leave coverage. Qualitative evidence from five case studies – Sweden, Iceland, the UK, Sri Lanka and Nigeria – with varying paternity leave policies demonstrates how this relationship works on the ground.
... Rege and Solli (2013) discovered that taking four weeks of PL within the first year reduces the father's future income, with effects lasting until the child reaches five years old. In contrast, Cools, Fiva, and Kirkebøen (2015) found no significant impact of Norway's PL reform on fathers' working hours or annual income, possibly due to different work-life balance compatibility across various social contexts. Furthermore, a well-documented positive correlation exists between a father's income and child health. ...
Based on multi‐source data, this study uses a cross‐regional and birth‐cohort variation to construct a cross‐sectional difference‐in‐differences model analyzing the impact of paternity leave (PL) policies on children’s health outcomes, and explores underlying mechanism. The study finds that PL polices significantly improve children’s health, with parallel trends tests and placebo tests demonstrating strong robustness of these findings. Further research reveals that PL can improve children’s health through three pathways: encouraging fathers’ involvement in childcare, increasing medical expenditure, and forming reasonable family labor division. Meanwhile, the policy shows significant heterogeneous effects on children’s health outcomes across different family sizes and father’s job types. Finally, this study further explores various factors affecting the implementation of PL, aiming to provide empirical evidence for policy‐makers.
... One cohort study showed that mothers who took more than 12 weeks' maternity leave experienced less severe depression regardless of whether the leave was paid or unpaid (Chatterji & Markowitz, 2012). Mothers who received paid maternity leave had better overall physical and mental health than those who did not receive paid leave (Aitken et al., 2015;Cools, Fiva, & Kirkebøen, 2015). In addition, maternity leave during the last trimester has been associated with a reduction in cesarean deliveries and pre-term birth (Guendelman et al., 2014). ...
... The introduction of father's quotas by the state reduces the negative consequences of women's prolonged parental leaveloss of professional skills (Farr e and Gonz alez, 2019), insufficient leisure activities (Yerkes et al., 2020). Paternity leave helps fathers spend more time with their children (Tamm, 2019), which leads to children's improved performance in elementary school (Cools et al., 2015), more active emotional development of children (Henry et al., 2019), better discipline and easier learning of the rules of conduct (Sarkadi et al., 2008). ...
Purpose
The purpose of the study is to research the current state of fathers' involvement in childcare during parental leave and to assess attitudes of Russian population towards possible measures that can expand the use of parental leave by fathers in Russia.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a survey of Russian parents with children under the age of 18 months in 2022. The sample accounts for 1,000 people; the survey covered almost all Russian regions.
Findings
The authors found that the ideal workload of fathers is not expected to exceed a third of the total parental workload. Russian parents are not ready to admit dissatisfaction with the existing distribution of workload during parental leave. However, an egalitarian demand for greater involvement of fathers in parental responsibilities is forming, and an interest in transforming the parental leave policy is emerging.
Originality/value
The value of the study consists of assessing the effectiveness of measures that may have a beneficial effect on the use of parental leave by fathers, as well as identifying consequences of the possible introduction of mandatory parental leave for fathers.
... In addition, housework is generally less enjoyable and less socially valued than parenting (Pailhé et al., 2018). Other studies have shown that although the effects are relatively imprecise, paternity leave causes a shift from maternal to paternal care at home (Cools et al., 2015). ...
The content of the article reflects some results of the sociological study "Implementation of paternity leave in the Republic of Moldova" conducted by the author in 2022. Paternity leave is an important tool that allows to enhance the role of father and husband/partner. Being on paternity leave generated for all fathers participating in the study a positive impact for him, the newborn, the wife and other family members. Although the Moldovan authorities provide suitable conditions for accessing paternity leave, the proportion of fathers taking paternity leave is low. Simply offering paternity leave is not enough, as fathers face many social, professional, financial and cultural difficulties in accessing it. The data from interviews with fathers who took paternity leave and fathers who did not take paternity leave showed that their profile differed according to socio-demographic characteristics, work situation, level of pay, relationship with the wife and her professional status. The article concludes with recommendations to increase the take-up of paternity leave and to increase the number of fathers who are with their mothers and newborn babies after birth to support them and enjoy the full exercise of their role as fathers.
... Our testing, however, does not support the son bias explanation for Scandinavia. Furthermore, Norwegian data indicates that paternal leave has more pronounced positive effects for daughters than sons (Cools et al., 2015). That could be a reason fathers in Scandinavian countries substitute time spent on work for time spent on children (rather than leisure). ...
There is much research indicating the presence of a parental preference for a particular gender of children. The main objective of this paper is to test between the two main explanations for the existence of such preference, namely differences in the costs of raising sons and daughters versus the gender bias (corresponding to parental utility derived from a child’s gender or from characteristics exclusive to that gender). First, we use recent EU-SILC data from several Balkan and Scandinavian countries to confirm that the gender of the firstborn predicts the likelihood of a given family having three children or more—a common measure of parental gender preference. We confirm son preference in certain Balkan countries and daughter preference in Scandinavian countries. Both having a first child of the preferred gender and of the more costly gender can decrease the probability of having three or more children because parents may already be content or may lack sufficient resources, respectively. Next, we use information on household consumption to differentiate the two explanations. We argue that under the differential cost hypothesis, parents of children of the more costly gender should spend more on goods for children and less on household public goods as well as on parental personal consumption. In contrast, having children of the preferred gender should increase spending on household public goods since such families have higher marriage surplus and are more stable. Our evidence corroborates the cost difference explanation in countries exhibiting daughter preference.
... 22 Lastly, fathers are more prone to take up paternity leave if this is paid. 28 ...
Cohesive families and stimulating and caring environments promoting attachment to caregivers is fundamental for a child's physical and psychosocial growth and development. Parental care, supporting early years development, presupposes the presence and involvement of parents in children's daily life with activities that include breastfeeding, playing, reading, and story‐telling. However, parents have to balance their child's wellbeing against employment, career progression and gender equality. Universally accessible and equitably available parental leave addresses this challenge.
Conclusion
Distinct from compulsory maternity leave, leave at full or nearly full pay for both parents benefits not only families, but also societal wellbeing and prosperity.
... Any positive effects of family cash benefits on fertility are, however, generally only temporary and transitory in nature. For example, Swiss lump-sum birth allowances, rolled out in a number of different cantons over time, temporarily increased the TFR by 5.5%, but this effect faded quickly (Chuard and Chuard-Keller, 2021 [114]). In Spain, the implementation of a lump-sum universal child transfer led to an increase in 3% in the TFR, but a cancelation of the programme in 2010 led to a decrease in the TFR of 6%, outweighing the increase that existed while the programme was active (González and Trommlerová, 2021 [115]). ...
Like other Nordic countries Norway has been investing heavily in family policy to enable combining work and family life. Nevertheless, between 2009 and 2022 the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in Norway dropped from 2 children to 1.4 children per woman. What is happening, and why? Can Norwegian parents still reconcile work and family commitments? What role do demographic trends play for the future of the Norwegian society? Should we worry? These are some of the questions that this study addresses. It illustrates various aspects of fertility trends, as well as changes in the Norwegian labour market as well as in Norway’s comprehensive system of public family support. The study also looks at social attitudes and how these might be affecting family formation and fertility trends. The final chapter projects demographic, economic, fiscal and social outcomes under different fertility trend scenarios.
... to be closer to their fathers -and vice versa (Cools, Fiva, Kirkebøen, 2011). ...
Parental leave policies are important instruments regulating how the men’s and women’s concurrent role as parents and employees is valued and encouraged. Although paternity leave in Moldova was introduced in 2016, the share of fathers who benefit from this leave remains low. The article presents the results of the qualitative sociological study conducted in 2022 with fathers who took paternity leave and fathers who did not take it. The aim of the research was to determine the barriers faced by fathers in taking paternity leave. The benefits of paternity leave for both fathers and the whole family were found: formatting strong emotional bonds between father and child, developing newborn care skills, strengthening confidence in their ability to care for children, improving family relations. In the implementation of this leave, fathers face social, professional, financial and cultural difficulties. Traditional stereotypes of behavior and ideas that a woman (mother) should take care of a child have a negative impact on the position of men (fathers) about the possibility of using parental leave. The level of education and the position on the labor market are determining factors in the use of paternity leave. Respondents who took paternity leave have higher education, stable occupational position and relatively high incomes; and those who did not take this leave have secondary education, unstable occupational position, and low incomes. Most of the fathers who used parental leave had the first child in the family, and those who did not use it had a second or third child. The study found that some employers do not encourage their employees to take paternity leave. Often this is due to a shortage of workers in the organization / enterprise, and is also more typical for the private sector.
... Studies about the paternity leave for fathers dated back to the early 1990s, and such studies remain active [52,53]. The researchers studied how fathers used the paternity leave, whether the paternity leave affected fathers' work and income, the influences of fatherhood on children, and so forth [52][53][54]. The associated Wikipedia articles focused on the history and policies of father's quota and paternity leave. ...
Background:
Many people turn to online open encyclopedias such as Wikipedia to seek knowledge about child abuse. However, the information available on this website is often disorganized and incomplete.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to analyze Wikipedia's coverage of child abuse and provide a more accessible way for users to browse child abuse-related content. The study explored the main themes and subjects related to child abuse on Wikipedia and proposed a multilayer user-oriented subject schema from the general users' perspective.
Methods:
The knowledge of child abuse on Wikipedia is presented in the child abuse-related articles on it. The study analyzed child abuse-related articles on Wikipedia, examining their history versions and yearly page views data to reveal the evolution of content and popularity. The themes and subjects were identified from the articles' text using the open coding, self-organizing map, and n-gram approaches. The subjects in different periods were compared to reveal changes in content.
Results:
This study collected and investigated 241 associated Wikipedia articles and their history versions and traffic data. Four facets were identified: (1) maltreatment behavior (n=118, 48.9%); (2) people and environment (n=28, 11.6%); (3) problems and risks (n=33, 13.7%); and (4) protection and support (n=62, 25.7%). A total of 8 themes and 51 subjects were generated from the text, and a user-oriented subject schema linking the facets, themes, subjects, and articles was created. Maltreatment behavior (number of total views = 1.15 × 108) was the most popular facet viewed by users, while people and environment (number of total views = 2.42 × 107) was the least popular. The popularity of child abuse increased from 2010 to 2014 but decreased after that.
Conclusions:
The user-oriented subject schema provides an easier way for users to seek information and learn about child abuse. The knowledge of child abuse on Wikipedia covers the harms done to children, the problems caused by child abuse, the protection of children, and the people involved in child abuse. However, there was an inconsistency between the interests of general users and Wikipedia editors, and the child abuse knowledge on Wikipedia was found to be deficient, lacking content about typical child abuse types. To meet users' needs, health information creators need to generate more information to fill the knowledge gap.
... Orloff, 1996). In Norway, the dual earner/dual carer model has received strong political support, resulting in high participation in the labour market among women and extensive involvement in childcare by men (Kitterød and Lappegård, 2012;Cools et al., 2015). As for provision of care to older family members, Schmid et al. (2012) found evidence of smaller gender contrasts in welfare states characterised by extensive and universal care services than in those depending mainly on the family for eldercare. ...
How to meet the demands of long-term care is a pressing issue in ageing societies. In most countries, care systems depend on the capability and willingness of family members to fill the gap between existing needs and formal service provision. Understanding the motivations of adult children to engage in parent care is, therefore, of central importance. The existing research literature offers different explanations, and here we concentrate on two key perspectives: normative and affectual commitments. Based on longitudinal data from two waves of the Norwegian Life Course, Ageing and Generation Study (2007 and 2017), we investigate to what extent adult children's previous attitudes towards filial responsibility norms and their perceived quality of the relationship to parents (in 2007) are associated with subsequent care-giving to ageing mothers and fathers (in 2017). The analyses show no evidence of a correlation between support of general filial responsibility norms and provision of help and care 10 years later. Perceived quality of the relationship, on the other hand, is associated with subsequent help and care-giving. The patterns are similar for daughters and sons. We conclude that within the context of a comprehensive welfare state, like the Norwegian, care-giving seems to be more of an individual choice than a societal prescription.
... E quality-enhancing reforms that grant parental leave to fathers are becoming increasingly common in developed societies (Castro-García and Pazos-Moran 2016). A wide-ranging literature examines the behavioral outcomes of such reforms, including childbearing choices, leave uptake by fathers, division of childcare, household work, women's sick leave, labor market participation, and earnings (e.g., Cools, Fiva, and Kirkebøen 2015;Rege and Solli 2013;Schober 2014). However, whether fathers' leave also promotes gender equal attitudes remains strikingly understudied. ...
Research shows that sexist attitudes are deeply ingrained, with adverse consequences in the socioeconomic and political sphere. We argue that parental leave for fathers—a policy reform that disrupts traditional gender roles and promotes less stereotypical ones—has the power to decrease attitudinal gender bias. Contrasting the attitudes of new parents who were (and were not) directly affected by a real-world policy reform that tripled the amount of fathers’ leave, we provide causal evidence that the reform increased gender-egalitarian views in the socioeconomic and political domains among mothers and fathers, and raised support for pro-female policies that potentially displace men among mothers. In contrast, informational, indirect exposure to the reform among the general public produced no attitudinal change. These results show that direct exposure to progressive social policy can weaken sexist attitudes, providing governments with a practical and effective tool to reduce harmful biases.
Objective
This study describes the childbearing trajectories and earnings of mothers in female same‐sex couples (FSSC) in Norway and, through comparisons with mothers in different‐sex couples (DSC), explores three factors behind mothers' earnings losses.
Background
Mothers in FSSC experience smaller earnings penalties following parenthood than mothers in DSC. We investigate three potential reasons for this: the number of pregnancies/births the mother goes through, number of children in the family, and the partner's sex.
Method
The study utilized Norwegian register data, 1999–2021, including 1050 women in FSSC and 168,649 in DSC. An event study was used to estimate labor earnings changes after a first and second child, separately for mothers in DSC and FSSC, and for partners in FSSC who gave birth once, twice, or never, isolating the impact of each factor.
Results
Childbirth/pregnancy was the most important factor. Birth mothers experienced large earnings losses after each pregnancy, with no differences between FSSC and DSC. Likely due to strict regulations, high costs, and low availability of fertility treatments, FSSC had fewer children and (only) 50% switched birth parent for a second child.
Conclusion
(Birth) mothers' larger earnings losses stem primarily from time away from the labor market in connection with each pregnancy/birth. Mothers in FSSC on average go through fewer pregnancies, possibly explaining their overall smaller earnings penalties in the first 5 years of parenthood.
In honor of the 125th year of The Scandinavian Journal of Economics , this paper highlights some of the influential research published here in the last 25 years, considers current trends in the field, and describes a view of the future of this journal in the overall economics research ecosystem.
Objective
This paper analyzed cross‐national variations in two dimensions of gender attitudes in 47 countries at the turn of the 21st century: beliefs about vertical gender equality and horizontal gender differentiation.
Background
We argue that societies do not experience universal, unidirectional progress toward nontraditional gender attitudes. The distribution of global attitudes toward horizontal and vertical gender differentiation displays uneven patterns across nations.
Method
Using data from the World Values Surveys ( N = 72,304) and employing machine learning, multilevel linear models, and multilevel multinomial models to analyze individual‐ and country‐level influences.
Results
We mapped gender ideologies globally by classifying individuals into four domains of ideological space—three varieties of egalitarianism: liberal egalitarian, egalitarian essentialist, and flexible traditionalist values, and one traditional ideology of traditional essentialist.
Conclusions
The liberal egalitarian gender ideology was widespread globally including in Muslim‐majority countries, and country characteristics correlated with gender ideologies in divergent ways. Female labor force participation was associated with three nontraditional ideologies that are progressive at least on one dimension. Economic development was linked with liberal egalitarian and egalitarian essentialist attitudes, both supporting gender equality. Generous public‐funded parental leave policies correlated with flexible traditionalist ideology that buttressed women's dual roles but not gender equality.
Implications
These results demonstrated an uneven societal transition in gender attitudes globally. Global gender ideologies charted three divergent trajectories toward multiple forms of non‐traditionalism. Although people in social democratic welfare states, liberal and conservative welfare states, former socialist countries, and Muslim‐majority countries occupied four distinct domains of gender ideology, different nation‐states were not monoliths conforming to the prevailing ideologies of their societies.
It has been three years since Aotearoa | New Zealand experienced its first nationwide lockdown in response to the global outbreak of the Covid-19 virus. Challenges stemming from the pandemic have been far reaching and pervasive as well as particularly severe in the employment context. Less than a year into the pandemic, Maria Hayes and I published a gender sensitive analysis of some of these challenges, outlining the disproportionate gender impact of various measures adopted to meet the disease.1 Our article showed that, at least in the early days of the pandemic, a raft of gendered inequalities appeared in relation to occupational health and safety risks; the value of care; unemployment; old age; and violence and abuse. Our analysis, moreover, concurred with that of Matthew Scobie and Anna Sturman,2 in that it revealed an intersectional negative disproportionate effect on Māori and Pasifika women.Overall, while the Aotearoa | New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic was largely effective in containing the outbreak until the vaccine rollout could be implemented, we found that its policy response distinctly lacked gender analysis which, in turn, contributed to widening the gender equality gap.3 We argued that the Covid-19 pandemic represented a crucial juncture and an opportunity for rethinking accepted labour standards and concepts under a gender lens. Based on our analytical reflections, we invited reflections on the relation between the economy and employment law and, in particular, we supported the reassessment of the value of work with a view to include production on an equal basis with reproduction.
Background
Residency training and parenthood are conflicting pursuits for many residents, as both often occur during similar years of life. Online policy about paid parental leave for residents is important for not only mitigating this dilemma, but also ensuring that the associated health benefits can be fully capitalised on.
Purpose
Investigate the extent of advertised paid parental leave for anaesthesiology residencies in the USA and to explore whether this had an association with the gender of the department chair for these programmes. Analysis of Canadian anaesthesiology residencies was performed to assess whether a nation with federally protected paid parental leave yielded disparate rates of advertised paid parental leave.
Methods
All accredited US anaesthesiology residency programme websites were reviewed to determine the gender of the department chair and the existence of advertised paid parental leave for residents. χ² analysis was used to determine if there was a statistically significant association between the gender of anaesthesiology residency department chairs and paid parental leave advertised. Rates of advertised paid parental leave were compared with those seen in Canadian anaesthesiology residencies.
Results
US anaesthesiology residency department chairs were 84% (137/164) men. Of the men-led programmes, 42% (58/137) advertised paid parental leave, while 70% (19/27) of women-led programmes advertised such benefits (p<0.05). Overall, 47% of (77/164) of US anaesthesiology residencies advertised paid parental leave, while 76% (13/17) of Canadian anaesthesiology residencies advertised paid parental leave (p<0.05).
Conclusion
In the USA, anaesthesiology residencies with department chairs held by women had a higher rate of advertised paid parental leave. Such findings call attention to the potential downstream effects of lacking diversity in leadership within medicine. When compared with the USA, Canada was found to have higher rates of advertised paid parental leave across their anaesthesiology residencies, potentially highlighting the impact of federal legislature on medical residents.
We study how fathers' access to workplace flexibility affects maternal postpartum health. We use variation from a Swedish reform that granted new fathers more flexibility to take intermittent parental leave during the postpartum period and show that increasing the father's temporal flexibility—and thereby his ability to be present at home together with the mother—reduces the incidence of maternal postpartum health complications. Our results suggest that mothers bear part of the burden from a lack of workplace flexibility for men because a father's inability to respond to domestic shocks exacerbates the maternal health cost of childbearing. (JEL D13, I12, J13, J16, J22, J32, M54)
This study examines how paid maternity leave (ML) impacted fertility and mothers’ labor force participation in Romania. The ML gives mothers the right to paid leave until the child turns one year old, and it offers 65% of monthly income before birth. I examine the effects of this policy change using a regression discontinuity design and census data. I show that mothers who are eligible for ML are 2.5 percentage-points more likely to have an additional child than those ineligible. The effect is persistent for seven years after the policy was implemented. I find no significant results regarding the mother’s labor force participation. These results have important implications regarding the shrinking working-age population and the ability to fund benefits programs.
Better employment quality can improve personal well-being, social cohesion, and inclusive growth and development. Yet good quality jobs—associated with greater well-being—are less accessible to women than men. While it is understood that policies balancing family and work lead to greater female labor participation, this paper investigates whether one such policy—increased childcare—improves the quality of jobs where mothers are employed. The context we analyze is a nationwide school reform in Chile that extended school schedules for primary school-aged children, providing childcare services. We combine administrative data of the phase-in of the policy with panel data of individual mothers’ employment outcomes and socio-economic characteristics. We estimate a fixed-effects model that controls for mothers’ unobserved heterogeneity and identifies the effect of the policy from plausibly exogenous temporal and spatial variations in access to schools with long schedules and exogenous exposure to the policy. We find a positive effect of childcare on several measures of employment quality and gender gaps within the couple. Our evidence suggests that the mechanism driving the impact is the implicit subsidy to the cost of childcare, affecting the opportunity cost of mothers’ time. In addition, we find heterogeneous results by mothers’ education level. Access to childcare through longer primary school schedules can increase household welfare and can play a role in reducing income and gender inequalities.
Evidence suggests that separate spheres gender norms discourage girls from maths. We therefore examine a policy that counteracts such norms among parents, and investigate whether it increases girls' participation in maths‐intensive studies. Specifically, we examine a parental leave reform that reserved one month of leave for fathers, and estimate its effect on children's study choices. We find that the reform increases the probability of doing a maths‐intensive programme in upper secondary education among girls whose father was otherwise reluctant to take leave. There is no effect on boys. We also conduct heterogeneity analyses to investigate whether the results can be explained by human capital transmission or the gender norms mechanism. The results of our analyses suggest that the gender norms mechanism is at play.
How do fathers adjust their working hours after the birth of their first child? Though the impact of childbirth on women’s employment is well-established, less is known about its effect on fathers. We investigate this question in the Netherlands (2006–2017), a country characterized by high prevalence of part-time work. We focus on two contexts that might shape the extent to which first-time fathers reduce their working hours after childbirth: the household and the organization. For this purpose, we use detailed longitudinal register data. The results reveal that men’s employment displays a high degree of stability around childbirth: even in the Dutch “part-time economy,” the vast majority of fathers remain full-time employed. We do find substantial heterogeneity in labor market responses after childbirth. Fathers earning relatively less than their partner pre-childbirth are more likely to scale down their working hours. The organizational gender composition is also associated with work hours reductions following childbirth. Although we find that fathers’ employment is contingent on both the household and organizational context, the substantial stability in men’s labor supply remains an obstacle to a more equal division of (un)paid labor.
Background
Parenting-related leave policies have gained increasing endorsement across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in recent decades. Previous reviews have focused on the short-term impacts and found predominantly positive effects on children. Although there is a growing interest in the long-term impact during adolescence and young adulthood, a comprehensive assessment of this aspect is currently lacking.
Methods
We systematically reviewed studies from three electronic databases (Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed), which used quasi-experimental design and examined policies legislating the introduction or expansion of parenting-related leave policies in North America or Europe. We looked at studies focused on well-being beyond the age of 12 and analyzed the findings across different domains of well-being: health, education and labour market outcomes.
Results
The quasi-experimental evidence is rather limited. The introduction of leave policies or gender-specific quotas produces substantial benefits in the long run. Further, maternal socioeconomic and educational background appears to play a substantial moderating role between leave and adolescents’ well-being. Adolescents with mothers who have higher levels of education have demonstrated a more pronounced advantage from the extended time spent together, thereby accentuating pre-existing disparities.
Conclusions
Though the expansion of already long leaves might not generate significant outcomes, the introduction of leave policies or gender-specific quotas produces substantial long-term benefits. This evidence entails considerable policy implications for countries that lack a national leave policy or offer only short durations of paid leave, such as the USA.
Although existing studies have suggested that men's leave‐taking positively affects children's development and their involvement in childcare and household chores in the long run, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. To shed light on this ambiguity, this study develops a dynamic collective household model and analyses household decisions on parental leave‐sharing between spouses, resource allocation, home production, and labour supply. We demonstrate that gender equality in bargaining positions within families before leave‐taking is crucial in explaining the positive impacts of men's leave‐taking. Specifically, if women's intrahousehold bargaining power before taking parental leave is sufficiently low, their husbands are unlikely to take leave, and women's positions may deteriorate after leave. Consequently, households may allocate fewer resources to children, and men may not actively participate in childcare and household chores. Our model suggests that implementing parental leave policies for both genders may not be sufficient; simultaneous measures to increase women's bargaining power are necessary to encourage men to take parental leave and maximize the policies' benefits.
In standard promotion tournaments, contestants are ranked based on their output or productivity. We argue that workers’ career progression may also depend on their relative rankings in dimensions a priori unrelated to their job performance, such as visibility or in-person presence. Such implicit tournaments may rationalize a variety of seemingly counterproductive practices in the workplace, including long working hours, low uptake of statutory leave, and presenteeism. We illustrate the significance of implicit tournaments using the case of paternity leave among new fathers, where we exogenously vary a focal worker’s ranking within a contest, not via his own leave status but that of his competitors, exploiting a policy reform. We show that the focal worker is put on a better earnings trajectory than otherwise when a larger share of his competitors take leave because of the reform. The focal worker’s own absolute leave, however, has no direct effect on his earnings path as long as his own and his competitors’ leave statuses are symmetric. With effective coordination, it should thus be possible for all fathers to utilize paternity leave without incurring unwarranted career costs. This has implications for statutory leave policies, flexible work arrangements, and gender equality.
Introduction
In the first part of this White Paper, the European Association of Neurosurgical Societies (EANS) Diversity in Neurosurgery Committee (DC) addressed the obstacles faced by neurosurgeons when planning to have a family and practice during pregnancy, attempting to enumerate potential, easily implementable solutions for departments to be more family-friendly and retain as well as foster talent of parent-neurosurgeons, regardless of their gender identity and/or sexual orientation. Attrition avoidance amongst parent-neurosurgeons is at the heart of these papers.
Research question
In this second part, we address the obstacles posed by practice with children and measures to mitigate attrition rates among parent-neurosurgeons. For the methodology employed to compose this White Paper, please refer to Supplementary Electronic Materials (SEM) 1.
Materials and methods
For composing these white papers, the European Association of Neurosurgical Societies (EANS)'s Diversity Committee (DC) recruited neurosurgeon volunteers from all member countries, including parents, aspiring parents, and individuals without any desire to have a family to create a diverse and representative working group (WG).
Results
In spite of the prevailing heterogeneity in policies across the continent, common difficulties can be identified for both mothers and fathers considering the utilization of parental leave.
Discussion and conclusion
Reconciliation of family and a neurosurgical career is challenging, especially for single parents. However, institutional support in form of childcare facilities and/or providers, guaranteed lactation breaks and rooms, flexible schedule models including telemedicine, and clear communication of policies can improve working conditions for parent-neurosurgeons, avoid their attrition, and foster family-friendly work environments.
The past five decades have seen a remarkable convergence in the economic roles of men and women in society. Yet, persistently large gender gaps in terms of labor supply, earnings, and representation in top jobs remain. Moreover, in countries like the United States, convergence in labor market outcomes appears to have slowed in recent decades. In this article, we focus on the role of children and show that many potential explanations for the remaining gender disparities in labor market outcomes are related to the fact that children impose significantly larger penalties on the career trajectories of women relative to men. We document that, in the United States, more than two-thirds of the overall gender earnings gap can be accounted for by the differential impacts of children on women and men. We propose a simple model of household decision-making to motivate the link between children and gender gaps in the labor market, and to help rationalize how various factors potentially interact with parenthood to produce differential outcomes by gender. We discuss several forces that might make the road to gender equity even more challenging for modern cohorts of parents, and offer a critical discussion of public policies that seek to address the remaining gaps. (JEL D13, J12, J13, J16, J22, J31, J71)
Women tend to experience a substantial decline in their labour income after their first child is born, while men do not. Do such ‘child penalties’ also exist in the political arena? Using comprehensive administrative data from Norway, we find that women are less likely than men to secure elected office after their first child is born. The effects manifest already from the nomination stage, where mothers receive less favourable rankings on party lists relative to comparable fathers. This paper broadens our understanding of a fundamental social issue in political representation and demonstrates how motherhood affects even positively selected women.
We study whether free preschool affects the subsequent school performance of children from immigrant families. Our difference-in-differences approach takes advantage of a policy intervention implemented in two districts in Oslo, leaving other similar districts unaffected. The grade point average of girls increases more in the intervention districts than in the comparison districts, resulting in effect estimates of about a tenth of the standard deviation. We find no consistent effects for boys.
We study the impact of maternal care on early child development using an expansion in Canadian maternity leave entitlements. Following the leave expansion, mothers who took leave spent between 48 and 58 percent more time not working in the first year of their children's lives. We find that this extra maternal care primarily crowded out home-based care by unlicensed non-relatives, and replaced mostly full-time work. However, the estimates suggest a weak impact of the increase in maternal care on indicators of child development. Measures of family environment and motor-social development showed changes very close to zero. Some improvements in temperament were observed but occurred both for treated and untreated children.
This paper develops a covariate-based approach to the external validity of instrumental variables (IV) estimates. Assuming that differences in observed complier characteristics are what make IV estimates differ from one another and from parameters like the effect of treatment on the treated, we show how to construct estimates for new subpopulations from a given set of covariate-specific LATEs. We also develop a reweighting procedure that uses the traditional overidentification test statistic to define a population for which a given pair of IV estimates has external validity. These ideas are illustrated through a comparison of twins and sex-composition IV estimates of the effects childbearing on labor supply.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
In the 1960s and 1970s, many states introduced grants for school districts offering kindergarten programs. This paper exploits the staggered timing of these initiatives to estimate the long-term effects of a large public investment in universal early education. I find that white children aged five after the typical state reform were less likely to be high school dropouts and had lower institutionalization rates as adults. I rule out similar positive effects for blacks, despite comparable increases in their enrollment in public kindergartens in response to the initiatives. The explanation for this finding that receives most empirical support is that state funding for kindergarten crowded out participation in federally-funded early education among the poorest five year olds.
We investigate the impact of maternity leave on the cognitive and behavioral development of children at ages 4 and 5. The impact is identified by legislated increases in the duration of maternity leave in Canada, which significantly increased the amount of maternal care children received in the second half of their first year. We carefully document how other observable inputs to child development vary across cohorts of children exposed to different maternity leave regimes. Our results indicate that maternity leave changes had no positive effect on indices of children’s cognitive and behavioral development. We uncover a small negative impact on PPVT and Who Am I? scores, which suggests the timing of the mother/child separation due to the mother’s return to work may be important.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
We study the impact on children of increasing maternity leave benefits using a reform that increased paid and unpaid maternity leave in Norway in July 1977. Mothers giving birth before this date were eligible only for 12 weeks of unpaid leave, while those giving birth after were entitled to 4 months of paid leave and 12 months of unpaid leave. This increased time with the child led to a 2.7 percentage points decline in high school dropout and a 5% increase in wages at age 30. For mothers with low education we find a 5.2 percentage points decline in high school dropout and an 8% increase in wages at age 30. The effect is especially large for children of those mothers who, prior to the reform, would take very low levels of unpaid leave.
This paper provides new evidence on the long-term benefits of Head Start using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. I compare siblings who differ in their participation in the program, controlling for a variety of pre-treatment covariates. I estimate that Head Start participants gain 0.23 standard deviations on a summary index of young adult outcomes. This closes one-third of the gap between children with median and bottom quartile family income, and is about 80 percent as large as model programs such as Perry Preschool. The long-term impact for disadvantaged children is large despite "fadeout" of test score gains. (JEL H52, J13, I28, I38)
From the mid-1960s to around 1980, Sweden extended its family policies that provide financial and in-kind support to families
with children very quickly. The benefits were closely tied to previous work experience. Thus, women born in the 1950s faced
markedly different incentives when making fertility choices compared to women born only 15–20 years earlier. This paper examines
the evolution of completed fertility patterns for Swedish women born in 1925–1958 and makes comparisons to women in neighbouring
countries where the policies were not extended as much as in Sweden. The results suggest that the extension of the policy
raised the level of fertility, shortened the spacing of births, and induced fluctuations in the period fertility rates, but
it did not change the negative relationship between women’s educational level and completed fertility.
This paper analyzes the effects of changes in the duration of paid, job-protected parental leave on mothers' higher-order fertility and post-birth labor market careers. Identification is based on a major Austrian reform increasing the duration of parental leave from one to two years for any child born on or after July 1, 1990. We find that mothers who gave birth to their first child immediately after the reform had more second children than pre-reform mothers, and that extended parental leave significantly reduced return-to-work. Employment and earnings also decrease in the short run but not in the long run. Fertility and work responses vary across the population in ways suggesting that both cash transfers and job protection are relevant. Increasing parental leave for a future child increases fertility strongly but leaves
short-run post birth careers relatively unaffected. Partially reversing the 1990 extension, a second 1996 reform improves employment and earnings while compressing the time between births.
The core methods in today's econometric toolkit are linear regression for statistical control, instrumental variables methods for the analysis of natural experiments, and differences-in-differences methods that exploit policy changes. In the modern experimentalist paradigm, these techniques address clear causal questions such as: Do smaller classes increase learning? Should wife batterers be arrested? How much does education raise wages?Mostly Harmless Econometricsshows how the basic tools of applied econometrics allow the data to speak.In addition to econometric essentials,Mostly Harmless Econometricscovers important new extensions--regression-discontinuity designs and quantile regression--as well as how to get standard errors right. Joshua Angrist and J rn-Steffen Pischke explain why fancier econometric techniques are typically unnecessary and even dangerous. The applied econometric methods emphasized in this book are easy to use and relevant for many areas of contemporary social science.An irreverent review of econometric essentialsA focus on tools that applied researchers use mostChapters on regression-discontinuity designs, quantile regression, and standard errorsMany empirical examplesA clear and concise resource with wide applications.
We study how the duration of paid parental leave affects the accumulation of cognitive skills among children. Using a reform which extended parental leave benefits from 12 to 15 months for Swedish children born after August 1988 we evaluate the effects of prolonged parental leave on children's test scores and grades at age 16. We show that, on average, the reform had no effect on children's scholastic performance. However, we do find positive effects for children of well-educated mothers, a result that is robust to a number of different specifications. We find no corresponding heterogeneity relative to parental earnings or fathers' education, or relative to other predictors of child performance. We find no effects on intermediate outcomes such as mothers' subsequent earnings, child health, parental fertility, divorce rates, or the mothers' mental health. Overall the results suggest positive causal interaction effects between mothers' education and the amount of time mothers spend with their children. Since the institutional context is one in which the alternative is subsidized day care, the results imply that subsidizing longer parental leave spells rather than day care reinforce the relationship between maternal education and school outcomes.
Using Norwegian registry data we investigate how paternity leave affects fathers’ long-term earnings. In 1993 Norway introduced a paternity quota of the paid parental leave. We estimate a difference-in-differences model which exploits differences in fathers' exposure to the paternity quota. Our analysis suggests that four weeks paternity leave during the child’s first year decreases fathers’ future earnings by 2.1 percent. Importantly, this effect persists up until our last point of observation when the child is five years old. The earnings effect is consistent with increased long-term father involvement, as fathers shift time and effort from market to home production. In an investigation of Norwegian time use data we find additional evidence for this hypothesis.
This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection as well as empirical evidence on the effects of patent rights. Then, the second part considers the international aspects of IPR protection. In summary, this paper draws the following conclusions from the literature. Firstly, different patent policy instruments have different effects on R&D and growth. Secondly, there is empirical evidence supporting a positive relationship between IPR protection and innovation, but the evidence is stronger for developed countries than for developing countries. Thirdly, the optimal level of IPR protection should tradeoff the social benefits of enhanced innovation against the social costs of multiple distortions and income inequality. Finally, in an open economy, achieving the globally optimal level of protection requires an international coordination (rather than the harmonization) of IPR protection.
his paper presents formal models of child development that capture the essence of recent findings from the empirical literature on child development. The goal is to provide theoretical frameworks for interpreting the evidence from a vast empirical literature, for guiding the next generation of empirical studies and for formulating policy. We start from the premise that skill formation is a life-cycle process. It starts in the womb and goes on throughout most of the adult life. Families and firms have a role in this process that is at least as important as the role of schools. There are multiple skills and multiple abilities that are important for adult success. Abilities are both inherited and created, and the traditional debate of nature versus nurture is outdated and scientifically obsolete. The technology of skill formation has two additional important characteristics. The first one is that IQ and behavior are more plastic at early ages than at later ages. Furthermore, behavior is much more malleable than IQ as individuals age. The second is that human capital investments are complementary over time. Early investments increase the productivity of later investments. Early investments are not productive if they are not followed up by later investments. The returns to investing early in the life cycle are high. Remediation of inadequate early investments is difficult and very costly
The problem of determining cause and effect is one of the oldest in the social sciences, where laboratory experimentation is generally not possible. This article provides a perspective on the analysis of causal relationships in population research that draws upon recent discussions of this issue in the field of economics. Within economics, thinking about causal estimation has shifted dramatically in the past decade toward a more pessimistic reading of what is possible and a retreat in the ambitiousness of claims of causal determination. In this article, the framework that underlies this conclusion is presented, the central identification problem is discussed in detail, and examples from the field of population research are given. Some of the more important aspects of this framework are related to the problem of the variability of causal effects for different individuals; the relationships among structural forms, reduced forms, and knowledge of mechanisms; the problem of internal versus external validity and the related issue of extrapolation; and the importance of theory and outside evidence.
It has been argued that a society's gender system may influence parents' sex preferences for children. If this is true, one should expect to find no evidence of such preferences in countries with a high level of gender equality. In this article, we exploit data from population registers from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden to examine continuities and changes in parental sex preferences in the Nordic countries during the past three to four decades. First, we do not observe an effect of the sex of the first born child on second-birth risks. Second, we detect a distinct preference for at least one child of each sex among parents of two children. For third births, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish parents seem to develop a preference for having a daughter, while Finns exhibit a significant preference for having a son. These findings show that modernization and more equal opportunities for women and men do not necessarily lead to parental gender indifference. On the contrary, they may even result in new sex preferences.
We investigate conditions sufficient for identification of average treatment effects using instrumental variables. First we show that the existence of valid instruments is not sufficient to identify any meaningful average treatment effect. We then establish that the combination of an instrument and a condition on the relation between the instrument and the participation status is sufficient for identification of a local average treatment effect for those who can be induced to change their participation status by changing the value of the instrument. Finally we derive the probability limit of the standard IV estimator under these conditions. It is seen to be a weighted average of local average treatment effects.
It is well understood that government policies can distort behaviour. But what is less often recognized is the anticipated introduction of a policy can introduce its own distortions. We study one such “introduction effect”, using evidence from a unique policy change in Australia. In 2004, the Australian government announced that children born on or after July 1, 2004 would receive a $3000 “Baby Bonus.” Although the policy was only announced a few months before its introduction, parents appear to have behaved strategically in order to receive this benefit, with the number of births dipping sharply in the days before the policy commenced. On July 1, 2004, more Australian children were born than on any other single date in the past thirty years. We estimate that over 1000 births were “moved” so as to ensure that their parents were eligible for the Baby Bonus, with about one quarter being moved by more than two weeks. Most of the effect was due to changes in the timing of inducement and caesarean section procedures. This birth-timing event represents a considerable opportunity for health researchers to study the impact of planned birthdays and hospital management issues.
The paper explores the strict school enrolment rules to estimate the effect of age at school entry on school achievement for 15-16 year old students in Norway using achievement tests in reading from OECD-PISA. Since enrolment date is common and compulsory for all students born in a particular calendar year, it is possible to identify the pure effect of enrolment age holding the length of schooling constant. The results indicate that the youngest children (born in December) face a significant disadvantage in reading compared to their older classmates. These results suggest that more flexible enrolment rules should be considered to equalize the opportunities of the children.
The association between the sex of children and their parents' risk of marital disruption is examined using the June 1980 Current Population Survey. The finding is that sons reduce the risk of marital disruption by 9% more than do daughters. This difference holds across marriage cohorts, racial groups, and categories of mother's education. A compelling explanation for these findings, supported by data from the National Survey of Children, stresses a father's greater role in raising sons than daughters and his consequently greater involvement in the family. Children provide a new basis for marital cohesion, one that rests on attachments and obligations to children. For fathers, the obligations and attachments are greater if they have sons.
We estimate peer effects in paid paternity leave in Norway using a regression discontinuity design. Coworkers and brothers are 11 and 15 percentage points, respectively, more likely to take paternity leave if their peer was exogenously induced to take up leave. The most likely mechanism is information transmission, including increased knowledge of how an employer will react. The estimated peer effect snowballs over time, as the first peer interacts with a second peer, the second peer with a third, and so on. This leads to long-run participation rates which are substantially higher than would otherwise be expected.
Do family policies influence attitudes and behavior or are they merely reflections of pre-existing attitudes? We consider the implementation of the Norwegian daddy quota, 4 weeks of parental leave reserved for the father, as a natural experiment, and examine the long-run causal effects on attitudes toward gender equality, on conflicts and sharing of household labor, and on support for public childcare. We find that respondents who had their last born child just after the reform report an 11% lower level of conflicts over household division of labor and that they are 50% more likely to equally divide the task of washing clothes than respondents who had their last child just before the reform.Highlights► We consider the introduction of paternity leave in Norway as a natural experiment. ► We study the effects on attitudes, on conflicts and sharing of household labor. ► We find substantive effects on conflicts and on the task of washing clothes.
This chapter seeks to set out what Economists have learned about the effects of early childhood influences on later life outcomes, and about ameliorating the effects of negative influences. We begin with a brief overview of the theory which illustrates that evidence of a causal relationship between a shock in early childhood and a future outcome says little about whether the relationship in question biological or immutable. We then survey recent work which shows that events before five years old can have large long term impacts on adult outcomes. Child and family characteristics measured at school entry do as much to explain future outcomes as factors that labor economists have more traditionally focused on, such as years of education. Yet while children can be permanently damaged at this age, an important message is that the damage can often be remediated. We provide a brief overview of evidence regarding the effectiveness of different types of policies to provide remediation. We conclude with a list of some of (the many) outstanding questions for future research. Hard-copy subscribers may access the tables for this paper here.
We study the impact on children of increasing the time that the mother spends with her child in the first year by exploiting a reform that increased paid and unpaid maternity leave in Norway. The reform increased maternal leave on average by 4 months and family income was unaffected. The increased time with the child led to a 2.7 percentage points decline in high school dropout. For mothers with low education we find a 5.2 percentage points decline. The effect is also especially large for children of mothers who, prior to the reform, would take very low levels of unpaid leave.
Many developed countries are currently considering a move toward subsidized, widely accessible child care or preschool. However, studies on how large-scale provision of child care affects child development are scarce, and focused on short-run outcomes. We analyze a large-scale expansion of subsidized child care in Norway, addressing the impact on children's long-run outcomes. Our precise and robust difference-in-differences estimates show that subsidized child care had strong positive effects on children's educational attainment and labor market participation, and also reduced welfare dependency. Subsample analyses indicate that girls and children with low-educated mothers benefit the most from child care. (JEL J13, J16)
Investments in children are generally seen as investments in the future economy. In this study I focus on time investments in children as I investigate the long-term educational effects on children of increasing parents' birth-related leave from 14 to 20 weeks using a natural experiment from 1984 in Denmark. The causal effect of the reform is identified using regression discontinuity design to compare a population sample of children born shortly before and shortly after the reform took effect. Results indicate that increasing parents' access to birth-related leave has no measurable effect on children's long-term educational outcomes. Mothers' incomes and career opportunities are slightly positively affected by the reform.
It is well understood that government policies can distort behavior. But what is less often recognized is that the anticipated introduction of a policy can introduce its own distortions. We study one such “introduction effect,” using evidence from a unique policy change in Australia. In 2004, the Australian government announced that children born on or after July 1, 2004 would receive a $3000 “Baby Bonus.” Although the policy was only announced seven weeks before its introduction, parents appear to have behaved strategically in order to receive the benefit, with the number of births dipping sharply before the policy commenced. On July 1, 2004, more Australian children were born than on any other single date in the past thirty years. We estimate that over 1000 births were “moved” so as to ensure that their parents were eligible for the Baby Bonus, with about one quarter being moved by more than one week. Most of the effect was due to changes in the timing of induction and cesarean section procedures. We find evidence to suggest that babies who were shifted into the eligibility period were more likely to be of high birth weight. Two years later, on July 1, 2006, the Baby Bonus was increased, and we find that this again caused births to be moved from June to July. These birth timing events represent an opportunity for health researchers to study the impact of planned birthdays and hospital management issues.
This paper investigates the effect of parental leave – both own and spousal – on subsequent earnings using different sources of variation. Using fixed-effect models, and in line with previous results, parental leave is found to decrease each parent’s future earnings. Also spousal leave is important, but only for mothers. In fact, each month the father stays on parental leave has a larger positive effect on maternal earnings than a similar reduction in the mother’s own leave. Using two reforms of the parental leave system as exogenous sources of variation yields only imprecisely estimated effects, even though the reforms had a strong effect on parental leave usage. However, the point estimates tentatively suggest effects in the same range or larger than the fixed-effects model found.
To identify relative wage impacts of immigration, we make use of licensing requirements in the Norwegian construction sector that give rise to exogenous variation in immigrant employment shares across trades. Individual panel data reveal substantially lower wage growth for workers in trades with rising immigrant employment than for other workers. Selective attrition from the sector masks the causal wage impact unless accounted for by individual fixed effects. For low and semi-skilled workers, effects of new immigration are comparable for natives and older immigrant cohorts, consistent with perfect substitutability between native and immigrant labor within trade. Finally, we present evidence that immigration reduces price inflation, as price increases over the sample period were significantly lower in activities with growth in the immigrant share than in activities with no or small change in immigrant employment.
In every society for which we have data, people's educational achievement is positively correlated with their parents' education or with other indicators of their parents' socioeconomic status. This topic is central in social science, and there is no doubt that research has intensified during recent decades, not least thanks to better data having become accessible to researchers. The purpose of this chapter is to summarize and evaluate recent empirical research on education and family background. Broadly speaking, we focus on two related but distinct motivations for this topic. The first is equality of opportunity. Here, major the research issues are: How important a determinant of educational attainment is family background, and is family background - in the broad sense that incorporates factors not chosen by the individual - a major, or only a minor, determinant of educational attainment? What are the mechanisms that make family background important? Have specific policy reforms been successful in reducing the impact of family background on educational achievement? The second common starting point for recent research has been the child development perspective. Here, the focus is on how human-capital accumulation is affected by early childhood resources. Studies with this focus address the questions: what types of parental resources or inputs are important for children's development, why are they important and when are they important? In addition, this literature focuses on exploring which types of economic policy, and what timing of the policy in relation to children's social and cognitive development, are conducive to children's performance and adult outcomes. The policy interest in this research is whether policies that change parents' resources and restrictions have causal effects on their children.
Increasing returns from specialized human capital is a powerful force creating a division of labor in the allocation of time and investments in human capital between married men and married women. Moreover, since child care and housework are more effort intensive than leisure and other household activities, married women spend less effort on each hour of market work than married men working the same number of hours. Hence, married women have lower hourly earnings than married men with the same market human capital, and they economize on the effort expended on market work by seeking less demanding jobs. The responsibility of married women for child care and housework has major implications for earnings and occupational differences between men and women.
We examine the effects of moving out of high-poverty neighborhoods on the outcomes of teenage youth, a population often seen as most at risk from the adverse effects of such neighborhoods. The randomized design of the Moving To Opportunity demonstration allows us to compare groups of youth, initially similar and living in high-poverty public housing. An experimental group was offered vouchers valid only in a low-poverty neighborhood; a Section 8 group was offered traditional vouchers without geographic restriction; and a control group was not offered vouchers. We study outcomes in four domains: education, risky behavior, mental health, and physical health. Aggregating effect sizes over all of the outcomes, females in both treatment groups benefited from the moves, while males in both treatment groups experienced worse outcomes. Females in the experimental group experienced improvements in education and mental health and were less likely to engage in risky behaviors. Females in the traditional voucher group experienced improvements in mental health. Males in both treatment groups were more likely than controls to engage in risky behaviors and to experience physical health problems. We adopt a multiple-testing framework to account for the large number of estimates considered. We show that the overall effects on females in the experimental group and the effects on mental health for females in both treatment groups were least likely to be due to sampling variation. Families with female children and families with male children moved to similar neighborhoods, suggesting that their outcomes differ not because of exposure to different types of neighborhoods but because male and female youth respond to their environments in different ways.
The prevalence of son preference and its implications for family behaviour in developing countries have received a great deal of scholarly attention, but child-gender bias is believed to be empirically unimportant in wealthy, non-traditional societies. Studies by sociologists and psychologists during the past 30 years, however, have documented consistent discrepancies between the behaviour of parents of sons and parents of daughters--boys tend to increase marital stability and marital satisfaction relative to girls, and fathers spend more time with, and are more involved with, sons than daughters. In recent years, economists have begun to contribute to the child-gender literature, re-examining the effects of sons and daughters on family structure and parental involvement with larger samples and greater concern for possible sources of selection bias. Other economic outcomes, such as market work and earnings, have also been studied, and some investigators have exploited the randomness of child gender as a source of exogenous variation in parental behaviour. In general, recent results suggest that child gender does affect family stability and the time allocation of parents, but it is not clear whether these responses reflect parental preferences for boys rather than girls or differences in the constraints parents face. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.
This paper evaluates the impact of three major expansions in leave coverage in Germany on the long-run education and labor market outcomes of children. Evaluation of three policy reforms as opposed to a single reform enables us to analyze whether the impact of paid leave differs from that of unpaid leave, and whether an expansion of a relatively short leave period is more beneficial to child development than an expansion of an already long leave period. Our empirical analysis combines two large administrative data sources on wages, unemployment, and school outcomes. We identify the causal impact of the reforms by comparing outcomes of children born shortly before and shortly after a change in maternity leave legislation, and therefore require substantially weaker assumptions for identification than existing studies. We find little support for the hypothesis that an expansion in maternity leave legislation improves children’s outcomes. Given the precision of our estimates, we can statistically rule out the hypothesis that the expansion in paid leave from 2 to 6 (unpaid leave from 18 to 36) months raised wages (attendance at high track schools) by more than 0.3 % (0.1 %).
Despite important policy implications associated with the allocation of education resources, evidence on the effectiveness of school inputs remains inconclusive. In part, this is due to endogenous allocation; families sort themselves non-randomly into school districts and school districts allocate money based in order to compensate (or reinforce) differences in child abilities, which leaves estimates of school input effects likely to be biased. Using variation in education expenditures induced by the location of natural resources in Norway we examine the effect of school resources on pupil outcomes. We find that higher school expenditures, triggered by higher revenues from local taxes on hydropower plants, have a significantly positive effect on pupil performance at age 16. The positive IV estimates contrast with the standard cross-sectional estimates that reveal no effects of extra resources.
This paper develops a model of skill formation that explains a variety of findings established in the child development and child intervention literatures. At its core is a technology that is stage-specific and that features self productivity, dynamic complementarity and skill multipliers. Lessons are drawn for the design of new policies to alleviate the consequences of the accident of birth that is a major source of human inequality.
Many countries are trying to incentivize fathers to increase their share in parental leave and in household work to improve female labor market opportunities. Our unique data set stems from a natural experiment in Sweden. The data comprises all children born before (control group) and after the reform (treatment group) in cohorts of up to 27,000 newborns, mothers and fathers. We find strong short term effects of incentives on male parental leave. However, we find no learning-by doing, or specialization, effects: fathers in the treatment group do not have larger shares in the leave taken for care of sick children, which is our measure for household work.
Families, primarily female-headed minority households with children, living in high-poverty public housing projects in five U.S. cities were offered housing vouchers by lottery in the Moving to Opportunity program. Four to seven years after random assignment, families offered vouchers lived in safer neighborhoods that had lower poverty rates than those of the control group not offered vouchers. We find no significant overall effects of this intervention on adult economic self-sufficiency or physical health. Mental health benefits of the voucher offers for adults and for female youth were substantial. Beneficial effects for female youth on education, risky behavior, and physical health were offset by adverse effects for male youth. For outcomes that exhibit significant treatment effects, we find, using variation in treatment intensity across voucher types and cities, that the relationship between neighborhood poverty rate and outcomes is approximately linear. Copyright The Econometric Society 2007.
Handbook of Labor Economics
- D. Almond
- J. Currie
Handbook of the Economics of Education
- A. Björklund
- K. G. Salvanes
Daglige Fødselstall for Norge 1989–93
- Brenn T.
Omsorgspermisjon med “kjærlig tvang”: en kartlegging av fedrekvoten
- B. Brandth
- B. Øverli