Expansions in Maternity Leave Coverage and Mothers’ Labor Market Outcomes after Childbirth

By Uta Schönberg, Johannes Ludsteck. Journal of Labor Economics, 2014

326 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article analyzes the impact of five major expansions in maternity leave coverage in Germany on mothers’ labor market outcomes after childbirth. To identify the causal impact of the reforms, we use a difference-in-difference design that compares labor market outcomes of mothers who give birth shortly before and shortly after a change in maternity leave legislation in years of policy changes and years when no changes have taken place. Each expansion in leave coverage reduced mothers’ postbirth employment rates in the short run. The longer-run effects of the expansions on mothers’ postbirth labor market outcomes are, however, small.

Subfields: Gender Studies, General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4556a862569f20eb90f88b1c5291beafc4675c0c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Gender Studies

1. P. Haan
2. J. Geyer
3. Katharina Wrohlich
4. Alexander Bick

In General Health Professions

1. P. Haan
2. Katharina Wrohlich

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Katharina Wrohlich
2. P. Haan
3. Alexander Bick

Citations in the corpus

• Children and the Remaining Gender Gaps in the Labor Market (2020, unknown): “Women may also develop a stronger attachment to their children during long leave periods leading to a greater desire to spend even more time with the child (Schonberg and Ludsteck, 2014).”
• Maternity and Family Leave Policy (2017, unknown): “However, another study from Germany finds that longer periods of leave at lower or no pay can have adverse impacts on women’s wages up to eight years after their return to work (Schönberg and Ludsteck, 2014).”
• The effects of family policy on maternal labor supply: Combining evidence from a structural model and a quasi-experimental approach (2015, background): “2 For an overview of the development of parental leave legislation in Germany, including developments since 2007, see Kluve and Tamm (2013), Schönberg and Ludsteck (2014) or Spiess and Wrohlich (2008).”
• Maternity leave and children’s cognitive and behavioral development (2014, unknown): “Thus, the NLSCYand LFS evidence both indicate that the increase in maternity leave had little impact on mothers’ post-birth employment, which is consistent with Baker and Milligan (2008b) and Schonberg and Ludsteck (2014).”
• Reserving Time for Daddy: The Consequences of Fathers’ Quotas (2019, unknown): “…return to work and increase job continuity but have little effect on employment in the long run, both in Canada (Baker and Milligan 2008a, 2008b, 2010, 2015; Hanratty and Trzcinski 2009) and in Europe (Liu and Skans 2010; Dustmann and Schönberg 2012; Schönberg and Ludsteck 2014; Dahl et al. 2016).”