Do Family Policies Reduce Gender Inequality? Evidence from 60 Years of Policy Experimentation
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
vol. 16,
no. 2, May 2024
(pp. 110-49)
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.Citation
Kleven, Henrik, Camille Landais, Johanna Posch, Andreas Steinhauer, and Josef Zweimüller. 2024. "Do Family Policies Reduce Gender Inequality? Evidence from 60 Years of Policy Experimentation." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 16 (2): 110-49. DOI: 10.1257/pol.20210346Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D63 Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
- J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
- J32 Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions
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