Maternity Leave and the Responsiveness of Female Labor Supply to a Household Shock

Emma Tominey ()

No 7462, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Female labor supply can insure households against shocks to paternal employment. The paper estimates whether the female labor supply response to a paternal employment shock differs by eligibility to maternity employment protection. We exploit time-state variation in the implementation of unpaid maternity leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in the US which increased employment protection from 0 to 12 weeks. We find that mothers eligible for FMLA speed up their return to work in response to a paternal shock, with a conditional probability of being in work 53% higher than in households with no paternal shock. In contrast, there was a negligible insurance response for mothers with no employment protection.

Keywords: maternity leave; female labor supply; insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I30 J13 J20 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2013-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-ias, nep-lab and nep-lma
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Published - published as 'Female labour supply and household employment shocks: Maternity leave as an insurance mechanism' in: European Economic Review, 2016, 87, 256-271

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Related works:
Working Paper: Maternity Leave and the Responsiveness of Female Labor Supply to a Household Shock (2013)
Working Paper: Maternity Leave and the Responsiveness of Female Labor Supply to a Household Shock (2013)
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