The Right to Parental Part-Time Work: Workplace Flexibility and the Costs of Motherhood

Lea-Karla Matic and Johanna Luise Reuter

No 2026-06, Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Abstract: Part-time work is a policy margin through which governments seek to reconcile employment and family responsibilities, yet its broader effects remain poorly understood. We estimate the effects of Austria’s 2004 introduction of a legal right to parental part-time work for mothers in firms with more than 20 employees. Using administrative data and a triple-differencein-differences design, we find large, persistent increases in part-time employment but only modest, short-lived gains in labor market attachment. Adjustment instead occurs through greater retention with the pre-birth employer and higher subsequent fertility, alongside persistent earnings losses and adverse short-run effects on maternal mental health.

Keywords: Parental part-time; part-time trap; greedy jobs; child penalty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 D63 I10 J12 J13 J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08
Note: English
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jku:econwp:2026-06

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