Is longer maternal care always beneficial? The impact of a four-year paid parental leave

0561761 - NHÚ 2023 CZ eng V - Research Report
Bičáková, Alena - Kalíšková, Klára
Is longer maternal care always beneficial? The impact of a four-year paid parental leave.
Prague: CERGE-EI, 2022. 76 s. CERGE-EI Working Paper Series, 732. ISSN 2788-0443
Grant - others:AV ČR(CZ) StrategieAV21/22
Program: StrategieAV
Institutional support: RVO:67985998
Keywords : family leave * maternal care * subsidized childcare
OECD category: Applied Economics, Econometrics
https://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/wp/Wp732.pdf

We study the impact of an extension of paid family leave from 3 to 4 years on child long-term outcomes. Using a difference-in-differences design and comparing the first-affected with the last-unaffected cohorts of children, we find that an additional year of maternal care at the age of 3, which primarily crowded out enrollment into public kindergartens, had an adverse effect for children of loweducated mothers on human capital investments and labor-market attachment in early adulthood. The affected children were 12 p.p. more likely not to be in education, employment, or training (NEET) at the age of 21-22. The impact on daughters was larger and driven by a lower probability of attending college and higher probability of home production. Sons of low-educated mothers, on the other hand, were less likely to be employed. The results suggest that exposure to formal childcare may be more beneficial than all-day maternal care at the age of 3, especially for children with a lower socio-economic background.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0334338