Family-Friendly Workplace Policies

Julian Costas-Fernandez, Sebastian Findeisen, Anna Raute and Schönberg, Uta

No 21499, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper examines firms’ incentives to provide workplace amenities, focusing on employer-provided childcare, and the implications for gender inequality. Using rich matched employer–employee data linked to a comprehensive firm survey in Germany, we document substantial and persistent effects of employer-provided childcare on mothers’ labor market trajectories. Firms that offer childcare experience higher retention rates and notably shorter career interruptions among first-time mothers, especially those with high pre-birth wages, resulting in meaningful reductions in child penalties of 4.7 percentage points for high-wage mothers. The adoption of firm-provided childcare is also associated with stronger employment growth —particularly among mothers and female talent in high-wage occupations—without systematic adverse wage effects for women or mothers. Our findings align with models of imperfect competition, indicating that firms with greater monopsony power have stronger incentives to provide valuable workplace amenities. While firm-provided childcare plays a critical role in reducing gender gaps within firms, our findings also show that access to these benefits is uneven, widening disparities among women and mothers across firms.

JEL-codes: J13 J16 J23 J32 J42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21499 (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:cpr:ceprdp:21499

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21499

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().