Do Family Policies Reduce Gender Inequality? Evidence from 60 Years of Policy Experimentation

A-Tier
Journal: American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
Year: 2024
Volume: 16
Issue: 2
Pages: 110-49

Authors (5)

Henrik Kleven (not in RePEc) Camille Landais (London School of Economics (LS...) Johanna Posch (not in RePEc) Andreas Steinhauer (not in RePEc) Josef Zweimüller (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

0.804 = (α=2.01 / 5 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Do family policies reduce gender inequality in the labor market? We contribute to this debate by investigating the joint impact of parental leave and childcare, using administrative data covering Austrian workers over more than half a century. We start by quasi-experimentally identifying the causal effects of all family policy reforms since the 1950s on the full dynamics of male and female earnings. We then map these causal estimates into a decomposition framework to compute counterfactual gender inequality series. Our results show that the enormous expansions of parental leave and childcare have had virtually no impact on gender convergence.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:aea:aejpol:v:16:y:2024:i:2:p:110-49
Journal Field
General
Author Count
5
Added to Database
2026-01-25