Mothers' Labour Market Participation: Do Grandparents Make It Easier?Childcare arrangements are key in women's ability to juggle motherhood and working outside the home. As such, the study of the access to childcare and its use is of great policy relevance. We focus on a particular kind of informal childcare, the one provided by grandparents. Empirically, assessing the effect of grandparental childcare is not an easy task due to unobserved preferences. In light of the potential outcome framework, we interpret the biases resulting from unobserved preferences as arising from the non-compliance of mothers to the availability of grandparents and from preferences of grandparents for activities other than childcare. Using an Instrumental Variable approach on Italian data, we find that the effect of grandparental childcare on mothers' labour supply is positive, statistically significant and economically relevant. The effect is stronger for lower educated mothers, with young children and living in the North and Centre.JEL Classification: J10, J13, C26

The paper analyses the impact of grandparenting on individuals' fertility behaviour using longitudinal data from eleven European countries. In particular, we focus on how siblings may share and compete for grandparents' time in terms of childcare. By considering different family scenarios, we show that availability of grandparenting play an important role in individuals' decision making for having children. Grandparenting is particularly important in the South of Europe where public childcare is limited and here we see a large impact of grandparenting on fertility.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to investigate the role of the extended parental leave in the return to work for mothers of newborn children. Parental leaves have been introduced in the last 30 years in all European countries in order to extend the period of job-protection, allowing both parents to care for the child after the maternity leave period has expired. In this paper, I exploit the variability in policies offered by the EU countries, in terms of length of the leave and payments, and I study the influence of statutory leaves on the probability of staying at home with the child during the leave, and on the probability of working in the period of time following the leave. Using data from ECHP, I select women who have a child in the years of the survey, who have worked before, and I follow them over time. After studying the determinants of the return to work in each country separately, I generalize the results, matching women with similar human capital characteristics and fertility history from different countries and, consequently, under different parental leave regulations. Results suggest that the right to long and paid leaves gives mothers the opportunity to remain at home with the child at a lower cost, and that lengthy statutory leaves are associated with being more likely to be at work in the period following the leave.Keywords: parental leaves, women's labour supply, childbirth, childcare JEL classification: J13, J22 NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYAlthough female labour market participation has increased everywhere, women are still likely to interrupt their career when they have a child, for a period of time longer than the basic maternity leave.The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of extended parental leave in the return to work for mothers of newborn children, exploiting the variability in policies across EU countries, in terms of length of the leave and payments during the period. Parental leaves (also called "child care" leaves) have been introduced in the last 30 years 1 in all European countries in order to extend the period of jobprotection, allowing both parents to care for the child after the maternity leave period has expired.Generally, supporters of these policies claim that leave results in healthier children and a better position for women in the labour market, while opponents state that these restrictions can adversely affect women's careers. What is the effect of providing long period...

This paper investigates the effects of public child care availability in Italy in mothers' working status and children's scholastic achievements. We use a newly available dataset containing individual standardized test scores of pupils attending the second grade of primary school in 2009-10 in conjunction with data on public child care availability. Our estimates indicate a positive and significant effects of child care availability on both mothers' working status and children's Language test scores. We find that a percentage change in public child care coverage increases mothers' probability to work by 1.3 percentage points and children's Language test scores by 0.85 percent of one standard deviation; we do not find any effect on Math test scores. Moreover, the impact of a percentage change in public child care on mothers' employment and children's Language test scores is greater in provinces where child care availability is more limited.

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More educated parents are observed to have better educated children. From a policy point of view, however, it is important to distinguish between causation and selection. Previous research trying to control for unobserved heterogeneity has found conflicting results: in most cases, a strong positive paternal effect was found with a negligible maternal effect; in fewer cases, opposite results were found. In this paper, I make use of a sample of Norwegian twins to evaluate the impact on the robustness of the estimates when varying the sample size and when selecting different parts of the population. Results concerning the effect of mother's education are very sensitive to the size of the sample, while the part of the educational distribution considered seems to be a key to reconciling previous results from the literature. JEL classification: C23, I2

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There is a heated debate in many developed countries about how to design a welfare system that moves lone mothers off welfare and into work. We analyze the consequences of a major Norwegian workfare reform of the generous welfare system for lone mothers. The reform imposed work requirements and time limits on welfare receipt, while raising in‐work benefits. Our difference‐in‐differences estimates show that the reform was successful in improving labor‐market participation and in increasing the earnings of lone mothers. However, the reform was associated with income loss and increased poverty among a sizeable subgroup of lone mothers, who were unable to offset the loss of out‐of‐work benefits with gains in earnings.