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This paper analyzes the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the within-household gender gap in relation to paid work hours in full-time employed heterosexual couples in Spain. Using the Spanish Labor Force Survey (2019–2020) and a difference-in-differences method, we analyze three stages of the pandemic: strict lockdown, de-escalation, and partial closures to study the short-term effects and potential medium-term effects on gender inequality in terms of paid work hours. Our results suggest that during the strict lockdown period there was a tendency to fall back on traditional family gendered patterns to manage the work–life balance, especially when young children are present in male-headed households. However, this phenomenon seems to be a short-term consequence of the pandemic. The sector of activity (essential or non-essential) has also played a key role, the gender gap increased in male-headed households with female partners employed in non-essential sectors.

This paper analyzes the impact of the degree of urbanization on child material deprivation by region in Spain. Using the EU-SILC 2009 and 2014 special module on material deprivation, we find that living in a city or town, with respect to a village, increases child material deprivation to a larger extent than household material deprivation and income. The effect of income becomes larger only among households with the largest deprivation (top quintile). Differentiating by needs, children's basic needs provision does not respond to household material deprivation, income or degree of urbanization, whereas educational/leisure needs provision does. Finally, our results support the idea that regions with sufficiently high densely populated areas increase children's material deprivation. Our findings might be of help for politicians and policymakers to design more effective policies intended to alleviate the incidence of child material deprivation that go beyond incomerelated programs.