Causes and Consequences of a Father's Child Leave: Evidence from a Reform of Leave Schemes

Helena Nielsen

No 4267, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Many OECD countries have implemented policies to induce couples to share parental leave. This paper investigates how responsive intra-household leave-sharing is to changes in economic incentives. To investigate this fundamental question, we are forced to look at one of the Nordic countries which are the most progressive when it comes to family-friendly policies. An extensive reform of child leave schemes in Denmark affected couples differently depending on whether the parents where employed in the same or in different parts of the public sector. Based on a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that economic incentives are very important for intra-household leave-sharing. Increasing the couples' after tax income by $9 per day of leave which is transferred from the mother to the father is found to lead to a one day transfer. This corresponds to a supply elasticity close to unity.

Keywords: fathers; parental leave; child leave (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J22 J45 J48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp4267.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Causes and Consequences of a Father’s Child Leave: Evidence from a Reform of Leave Schemes (2009)
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:iza:izadps:dp4267

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().