Objective: In this project, we study changes in the working hours of men and women with and without children in the early phase of the COVID-19 crisis in Germany until August 2020. Background: The COVID-19 outbreak in Europe led to a sharp decrease in economic activity, along with temporary closures of childcare facilities and schools. Subsequent changes in working hours in the early phase of the pandemic and during summer 2020 may have contributed to inequalities between men and women or parents and non-parents respectively. Method: We use a unique panel dataset containing monthly survey data of the Institute for Employment Research (the IAB-HOPP) combined with administrative data of the German Federal Employment Agency. We run regression models with the change in working hours (before the crisis vs. working time at each panel wave) as the dependent variable and gender, parental status, and childcare arrangement as the main independent variables. Results: We observe a comparable reduction in working hours for both men and women during the spring lockdown. However, only the working hours of women recover and return to their pre-crisis level in summer 2020. Most surprisingly, having children has an accelerating effect on recovery for mothers but not for fathers. At the end of the observation period, fathers do not recover as fully as mothers do. Conclusion: These results challenge concerns about a temporary or possibly persistent 're-traditionalisation' of gender roles during the COVID-19 crisis.

Women are half as likely to be sanctioned as men in Germany’s means-tested welfare system, despite sanctions not explicitly being a gendered activation measure. I investigate the reasons underlying the “gender sanction gap” with a decomposition analysis on a sample from registry data. Findings show differences between women and men in their distributions on family-related and human-capital-related variables explain much of the gap. Results further suggest gender differences in behavior and treatment by public employment services also contribute to the gap, with women more frequently being exempted from sanctions due to childcare responsibilities.

In Germany, social investment can be crucial for disadvantaged young adults, as intergenerational mobility is low and credentials are decisive for employment. However, the literature on policy implementation calls attention to ‘Matthew effects’, by which the most disadvantaged often have the least access to social investment. We contribute to ongoing research on Matthew effects by examining whether the worst-off among young German welfare recipients are assigned to active labour market policy measures that are more advantageous or less advantageous. Findings for a register sample of 20–22 year olds in 2014 support hypotheses that those with the lowest education and employment experience participate less often in the most advantageous measures; particularly in firm-based upskilling and employment assistance, and more often in measures that proved to be not as beneficial, such as workfare programmes. On a positive note, welfare experience during adolescence as an indicator of low socio-economic status in the family of origin does not additionally affect access to social investment policy measures.

The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a challenge for social security systems such as the German basic income support (BIS) system of ‘Unemployment Benefit II'. The article analyses BIS entries and exits of unemployed people, differentiating by individual characteristics and economic sectors as well as BIS recipients’ participation in active labour market programmes during the first phase of the coronavirus crisis. Using aggregate administrative data, we find that lower exit rates from unemployment drive the coronavirus-related change in unemployment levels for BIS recipients more strongly than for the average unemployed. Those most strongly affected in their employment opportunities are BIS recipients without a vocational degree, thus underlining the importance of education. Furthermore, the sectors accommodation and food service activities and temporary agency employment, which normally provide employment opportunities for BIS recipients, are most affected by the Covid-19 crisis.

Around the globe, the coronavirus pandemic has triggered various reactions of governments designed to contain the pandemic. Among other things, the pandemic led to an unforeseen and unprecedented closure of schools and daycare facilities. In turn, these closures might have forced parents to stay at home to care for their children who could not attend schools or kindergartens. From a social policy perspective, this raises the question of the extent to which parents’ employment has been affected, as time spent on childcare might make parents reduce their working hours. To answer this question, we exploit within-country variations in school and childcare policies across the federal states of Germany to analyse their effect on parents’ working time. In specific, we compare the working time of parents who live in different federal states with different restrictions regarding childcare in a difference-in-differences and difference-in-difference-in-differences framework. Our results reveal a non-negligible positive effect of an earlier and more far-reaching reopening of schools and daycare facilities on parents’ employment. Our results indicate that prolonged closure goes along with negative employment effects for parents. Hence, containment and closure policies to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have substantial economic and social side effects.