The gender division of unpaid care work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

Jonas Jessen, Katharina Spiess (), Waights Sevrin () and Katharina Wrohlich
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Waights Sevrin: 28354 DIW Berlin, Berlin, Germany

German Economic Review, 2022, vol. 23, issue 4, 641-667

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic and related closures of day care centres and schools significantly increased the amount of care work done by parents. There has been much speculation over whether the pandemic increased or decreased gender equality in parental care work. Based on representative data for Germany from spring 2020 and winter 2021 we present an empirical analysis that shows that although gender inequality in the division of care work increased to some extent in the beginning of the pandemic, it returned to the pre-pandemic level in the second lockdown almost nine months later. These results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic neither aggravated nor lessened inequality in the division of unpaid care work among mothers and fathers in any persistent way in Germany.

Keywords: Gender division; domestic work; child care; day care; gender care gap; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1515/ger-2022-0003

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