Increasing the length of parents' birth-related leave: The effect on children's long-term educational outcomes

Rasmussen, Astrid Würtz

doi:10.1016/j.labeco.2009.07.007

Cited by 125 publications

(105 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Baker & Milligan (2010) found no signicant impacts of a recent increase in maternity leave from 6 months to one year in Canada for early childhood development. Rasmussen (2010) also found that increase in birth related leave in Sweden has no measurable eect on children's long term education outcomes.…”

Section: Parental Leave and Child Healthmentioning

confidence: 96%

The effects of parental leave on child health and postnatal care: Evidence from Australia

Khanam

Nghiem

Connelly

2016

Economic Analysis and Policy

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Section: Parental Leave and Child Healthmentioning

confidence: 96%

The effects of parental leave on child health and postnatal care: Evidence from Australia

Khanam

Nghiem

Connelly

2016

Economic Analysis and Policy

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“…Consider the research most closely related to our study. In a series of papers, Baker and Milligan (2008a, 2008b, 2010 evaluate the extension of leave from 25 weeks to 50 weeks in Canada, with an earnings replacement rate of 55%. They nd that while it increased breastfeeding, it had little eect on child health and development up to age 3 and negative eects on verbal and self-awareness scores at ages 4 and 5.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Is the Case for Paid Maternity Leave?

Dahl

Løken

Mogstad

et al. 2013

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S ABSTRACT What Is the Case for Paid Maternity Leave?Paid maternity leave has gained greater salience in the past few decades as mothers have increasingly entered the workforce. Indeed, the median number of weeks of paid leave to mothers among OECD countries was 14 in 1980, but had risen to 42 by 2011. We assess the case for paid maternity leave, focusing on parents' responses to a series of policy reforms in Norway which expanded paid leave from 18 to 35 weeks (without changing the length of job protection). Our first empirical result is that none of the reforms seem to crowd out unpaid leave. Each reform increases the amount of time spent at home versus work by roughly the increased number of weeks allowed. Since income replacement was 100% for most women, the reforms caused an increase in mother's time spent at home after birth, without a reduction in family income. Our second set of empirical results reveals the expansions had little effect on a wide variety of outcomes, including children's school outcomes, parental earnings and participation in the labor market in the short or long run, completed fertility, marriage or divorce. Not only is there no evidence that each expansion in isolation had economically significant effects, but this null result holds even if we cumulate our estimates across all expansions from 18 to 35 weeks. Our third finding is that paid maternity leave has negative redistribution properties. The program makes regressive transfers both from ineligibles to eligibles and within the group of eligible mothers. Since there was no crowd out of unpaid leave, the extra leave benefits amounted to a pure leisure transfer, primarily to middle and upper income families. Finally, we investigate the financial costs of the extensions in paid maternity leave. We find these reforms had little impact on parents' future tax payments and benefit receipt. As a result, the large increases in public spending on maternity leave imply a considerable increase in taxes, at a cost to economic efficiency. Taken together, our findings suggest the generous extensions to paid leave were costly, had no measurable effect on outcomes and poor redistribution properties. In a time of harsh budget realities, our findings have important implications for countries that are considering future expansions or contractions in the duration of paid leave.JEL Classification: J13, J18, H42

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“…Due to a slow fade-in of the policy change under consideration, study [12] uses a slightly different estimation approach that is also based on leave entitlements. In sum, most of these studies do not conclude that an increase in maternal months stayed at home has any significant effect on children's long-term educational attainment [9], [10], [11]. There is one notable exception, however.…”

Section: The Effect Of Maternal Employment On Children's Long-term Oumentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Evidence based on expansions in parental leave legislation is available for several countries (among others, Germany [9], Denmark [10], Sweden [11], and Norway [12]), and many of the outcomes vary slightly across the studies (e.g. highest degree obtained, high school dropout rates, college attendance, years of schooling, IQ, grades, or even wages and employment).…”

Section: The Effect Of Maternal Employment On Children's Long-term Oumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All of the studies first document that changes in parental leave legislation do induce strong changes in maternal return-to-work behavior. Studies [9], [10], and [11] combine regression discontinuity and difference-in-differences approaches. A regression discontinuity approach basically compares after-reform outcomes of children affected by the reform to those that were not affected, typically focusing on a rather tight interval around the cut-off date at which the reform was implemented in order to make the two groups of children as comparable as possible in terms of age and other characteristics.…”

Section: The Effect Of Maternal Employment On Children's Long-term Oumentioning

confidence: 99%

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Parental employment and children’s academic achievement

Schildberg-Hörisch¹

2016

izawol

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Increasing the length of parents' birth-related leave: The effect on children's long-term educational outcomes

Cited by 125 publications

References 40 publications

The effects of parental leave on child health and postnatal care: Evidence from Australia

The effects of parental leave on child health and postnatal care: Evidence from Australia

What Is the Case for Paid Maternity Leave?

Parental employment and children’s academic achievement

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