Joint Research and Cluster Colloquium - Changing Fertility and Heterogeneous Motherhood Effects: Revisiting the Effects of a Parental Benefits Reform
Time
Tuesday, 30. April 2024
11:45 - 13:15
Location
Y213
Organizer
Speaker:
Bernd Fitzenberger (IAB)
Changing Fertility and Heterogeneous Motherhood Effects: Revisiting the Effects of a Parental Benefits Reform
Abstract: This paper studies the causal effect of first time motherhood and how that effect changes by the 2007 reform in parental benefits in Germany. We further investigate how the reform affects the selection of women into motherhood and how that selection effect affects labor market outcomes. A large novel data set linking data from the pension insurance with administrative labor market data provides information on all births. We apply a dynamic treatment effect approach which differs from other strategies used in the literature to estimate the causal effect of motherhood and to evaluate the 2007 reform. The reform has positive medium-run effects on earnings and employment. There are no effects on second-order fertility and on full-time employment. While the reform slightly changes the selection of mothers, this has little impact on the reform effect for the causal effect of motherhood.