Parental Leave and Long-Term Life Satisfaction of Children - Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Former East Germany

Katharina Heisig () and Larissa Zierow ()

No 7806, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This study investigates the impact of an increase in paid parental leave — twelve instead of five months — on children’s long-term life satisfaction. Our setting, former East Germany, features high labor market participation of mothers and universal supply of standardized childcare. It thus mitigates identification issues such as selection into the labor market and provides a clear counterfactual to maternal care. Applying a difference-in-differences design we exploit the specific timing of parental leave reforms in 1976 and 1986. We find a significant and robust positive effect on now-adult children’s life satisfaction, and show that long-run subjective well-being can already be impacted by policies during the first year of an individual’s life.

Keywords: parental leave; well-being; childcare; child development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J13 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hap, nep-hea and nep-lma
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp7806.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7806

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().