Maybe Baby: Comparing Partnered Women's Employment and Child Policies in the EU-15

Jérôme De Henau, Danièle Meulders and Síle O'Dorchai ()

Feminist Economics, 2010, vol. 16, issue 1, 43-77

Abstract: This paper examines how child-related public policies influence women's employment in Europe. The analysis compares the difference in employment status between partnered mothers and nonmothers across the EU-15 using a wide range of self-constructed indicators of child policies such as childcare provision, parental leave, and tax-cash benefits. Using the recycled predictions method, it is possible to isolate the impact of the presence of a child from other characteristics likely to influence women's labor-market outcomes. Country-specific employment gaps among women are computed at different ages for the youngest child, for different outcomes (inactivity and part-time or full-time work), and for different levels of education. The main conclusion is that when it comes to securing equal labor-market access and conditions for mothers of young children and non-mothers, public childcare provision has the strongest impact. In the absence of public childcare, not even the most highly educated mothers can cope.

Keywords: Labor-market conditions; social policies; postponement of maternity; synthetic indicators; dual-earner couples; fertility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13545700903382703 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:femeco:v:16:y:2010:i:1:p:43-77

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RFEC20

DOI: 10.1080/13545700903382703

Access Statistics for this article

Feminist Economics is currently edited by Diana Strassmann

More articles in Feminist Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().