Parental Leave and Mothers' Careers: The Relative Importance of Job Protection and Cash Benefits

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lalive, Rafael; Schlosser, Analia; Steinhauer, Andreas; Zweimueller, Josef
• 署名单位: University of Lausanne; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Tel Aviv University; University of Zurich
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdt028
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 219-265
• 关键词: search; FAMILY

摘要

Job protection and cash benefits are key elements of parental leave (PL) systems. We study how these two policy instruments affect return-to-work and medium-run labour market outcomes of mothers of newborn children. Analysing a series of major PL policy changes in Austria, we find that longer cash benefits lead to a significant delay in return-to-work, particularly so in the period that is job-protected. Prolonged parental leave absence induced by these policy changes does not appear to hurt mothers' labour market outcomes in the medium run. We build a non-stationary model of job search after childbirth to isolate the role of the two policy instruments. The model matches return-to-work and return to same employer profiles under the various factual policy configurations. Counterfactual policy simulations indicate that a system that combines cash with protection dominates other systems in generating time for care immediately after birth while maintaining mothers' medium-run labour market attachment.