Family policy and maternal employment in the Czech transition: a natural experiment

Alzbeta Mullerova ()
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Alzbeta Mullerova: University of Paris Nanterre and IOS Regensburg
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Alzbeta Mangarella

Journal of Population Economics, 2017, vol. 30, issue 4, No 5, 1185-1210

Abstract: Abstract Czech family policies have gone through dramatic changes since the 1989 transition to a market economy, resulting into the highest employment gap between women with and without pre-school children in OECD. This paper focuses on the 1995 Czech Parental Benefit reform which extended the payment of universal parental benefits to 4 years instead of 3 without an equivalent extension of job-protected parental leave, leaving to mothers the choice of either guaranteed return to employment or an additional 12 months of benefits. The study relies on a difference-in-differences strategy to assess the net effect of this large-scale reform on mothers’ labour market participation. I find a strong negative impact on mothers’ probability of return to work at the end of parental leave, with a heterogeneous size with respect to their educational attainment. I also find evidence of the persistence of this detrimental effect on mothers’ employment beyond the short-term horizon targeted by the legislators.

Keywords: Parental leave; Policy evaluation; Female employment; J16; J18; P30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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DOI: 10.1007/s00148-017-0649-9

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