Reducing mommy penalties with daddy quotas

Allison Dunatchik and Berkay Özcan ()

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper investigates whether daddy quotas – non-transferable paternity leave policies – mitigate motherhood penalties women face in the labour market. Using the introduction of a daddy quota in Quebec, Canada as a natural experiment, we employ labour force survey data to conduct a difference-in-difference estimation of the policy’s impact on a range of mothers’ career outcomes, using mothers in the neighbouring province of Ontario as a comparison group. The results suggest Quebec mothers exposed to the policy are 5 percentage points more likely to participate in the labour force and to work full time, 5 percentage points less likely to work part time, and 4 percentage points less likely to be unemployed than they would have been in the absence of the policy. Our results are robust to an alternative semi-parametric difference-in-difference methodology and to a battery of placebo and sensitivity tests. However, we find that the policy’s effects are largest 2 to 3 years post-reform, reducing in size and significance thereafter, raising questions about the durability of such effects.

Keywords: families and work; family policy; labour force participation; maternal employment; work–family balance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2020-04-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Journal of European Social Policy, 4, April, 2020. ISSN: 0958-9287

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/103999/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Reducing Mommy Penalties with Daddy Quotas (2019)
Working Paper: Reducing mommy penalties with daddy quotas (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:103999

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