Elections define representative democracies but also produce spikes in physical mobility if voters need to travel to polling places. In this paper, we examine whether large-scale, in-person elections propagate the spread of COVID-19. We exploit a natural experiment from the Czech Republic, which biannually renews mandates in one-third of Senate constituencies that rotate according to the 1995 election law. We show that in the second and third weeks after the 2020 elections (held on October 9–10), new COVID-19 infections grew significantly faster in voting compared to non-voting constituencies. A temporarily related peak in hospital admissions and essentially no changes in test positivity rates suggest that the acceleration was not merely due to increased testing. The acceleration did not occur in the population above 65, consistently with strategic risk-avoidance by older voters. Our results have implications for postal voting reforms or postponing of large-scale, in-person (electoral) events during viral outbreaks.

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In this paper we ask how the division of household labor varies across heterosexual dual-earner couples with different relative wages with a focus on differences between Southern and Western Europe. Using the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions we first show that high income married or cohabiting women do twice as much housework as single women in Southern Europe. Further, their time spent in household production relative to their spouses' time in Southern Europe is the same regardless of their relative wages, while in Western Europe we find positive elasticity of substitution in household production with respect to relative wages. We thus present positive evidence for the presence of a "second-shift" that women face in Southern Europe, which may stem from regional gender norms. Our findings hold after instrumenting for relative wages using the relative wages of similar socio-economic groups in other countries.

In this paper we ask how the division of household labor varies across heterosexual dual-earner couples with different relative wages with a focus on differences between Southern and Western Europe. Using the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions we first show that high income married or cohabiting women do twice as much housework as single women in Southern Europe. Further, their time spent in household production relative to their spouses' time in Southern Europe is the same regardless of their relative wages, while in Western Europe we find positive elasticity of substitution in household production with respect to relative wages. We thus present positive evidence for the presence of a "second-shift" that women face in Southern Europe, which may stem from regional gender norms. Our findings hold after instrumenting for relative wages using the relative wages of similar socio-economic groups in other countries.