Kids or Courses? Gender Differences in the Effects of Active Labour Market Policies

Michael Lechner and Stephan Wiehler

No 6267, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper investigates active labour market programs in Austria with a special emphasis on male-female effect heterogeneity. On average, we find only small effects, if any, for most of the programs. A crucial advantage of the large and informative administrative data we use is that it provides records about pregnancies and times of parental leave, in addition to the information that can typically be found in European administrative data sources used for evaluating active labour market policies. We show that these variables play a key role in removing selection bias and defining outcome variables which may explain why other similar studies found such programs to be more effective for women than for men. In particular for younger women a key effect of the programs is to reduce or postpone pregnancies and to increase the attachment to the labour force. After taking into account gender specific selection effects and the effects of the programs on pregnancies, gender differences (almost) disappear.

Keywords: Matching estimation; Active labour market policy; Panel data; Program evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-lab, nep-ltv and nep-ppm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Kids or courses? Gender differences in the effects of active labor market policies (2011)
Working Paper: Kids or Courses? Gender Differences in the Effects of Active Labor Market Policies (2007)
Working Paper: Kids or Courses? Gender Differences in the Effects of Active Labor Market Policies (2007)
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