Had a nice day at VSE Prague 😊 Great discussions, comments, and food! Thanks for the invitation, Klara Kaliskova 🙌

Results:

1. Labor supply elasticities higher for traditional mothers

2. Policy facilitating access to full-time childcare has stronger effect on egalitarian mothers

Implication: if distribution of attitudes changes over time, elasticities and policy effects change, as well

Exploit eligibility-cutoff by birth date of the child
Results:
👉 Traditional mothers reduce labor supply (46% stronger than baseline)
👉 Egalitarian mothers do not reduce labor supply

Event studies around birth of the first child:
👉 Pre birth: same labor supply for egalitarian and traditional mothers
👉 Post birth: egalitarians return much faster to the labor market
-> 15% more likely to work, work 4 hours more, persistent effects

👉 GER panel data (pairfam)
👉 Gender role attitudes: views about appropriate role of mothers
👉 Measure attitudes before birth of the first child
👉 In main specification, consider two groups: `egalitarian` and `traditional` women (median split)

JMP alert 🎉

What drives maternal labor supply - a key factor for labor market inequalities?

Gender role attitudes!

We use reduced form and structural methods to show that they are of first-order importance, both directly and through the mediation of policies (w/ Tim Mensinger)

🧵👇