Parental Leave Policy and Long-run Earnings of Mothers - Online Appendix

DOI

Paid parental leave schemes have been shown to increase women's employment rates but to decrease their wages in case of extended leave duration. In view of these potential trade-offs, many countries are discussing the optimal design of parental leave policies. We analyze the impact of a major parental leave reform on mothers' long-term earnings. The 2007 German parental leave reform replaced a means-tested benefit with a more generous earnings-related benefit that is granted for a shorter period of time. Additionally, a "daddy quota" of two months was introduced. To identify the causal effect of this policy mix on long-run earnings of mothers, we use a difference-in-differences approach that compares labor market outcomes of mothers who gave birth just before and right after the reform and nets out seasonal effects by including the year before. Using administrative social security data, we confirm previous findings and show that the average duration of employment interruptions increased for mothers with high pre-birth earnings. Nevertheless, we find a positive long-run effect on earnings for mothers in this group. This effect cannot be explained by changes in the selection of working mothers, working hours or changes in employer stability. Descriptive evidence suggests that the stronger involvement of fathers, incentivized by the "daddy months", could have facilitated mothers' re-entry into the labor market and thereby increased earnings. For mothers with low pre-birth earnings, however, we do not find beneficial long-run effects of this parental leave reform.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.7802/2679
Source https://search.gesis.org/research_data/SDN-10.7802-2679?lang=de
Metadata Access https://datacatalogue.cessda.eu/oai-pmh/v0/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_ddi25&identifier=519ad84b14c42ee33fe9e5508eebc73a145f8a1b9b5040d14b2bca90c6a4b482
Provenance
Creator Wrohlich, Katharina (Projektleitung)
Publisher GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences; GESIS Datenarchiv für Sozialwissenschaften
Publication Year 2023
Funding Reference [Hans Böckler Stiftung unter dem Projekt "Gleichstellungspolitische Implikationen des Elterngeldes", Projekt Nr 2017-327-3]
Rights Free access (without registration) - The research data can be downloaded directly by anyone without further limitations.; Freier Zugang (ohne Registrierung) - Die Forschungsdaten können von jedem direkt heruntergeladen werden.
OpenAccess true
Contact http://www.gesis.org/
Representation
Discipline Social Sciences