Germany is known to have one of the lowest fertility rates among Western European countries and also relatively low employment rates of mothers with young children. Although these trends have been observed during the last decades, the German public has only recently begun discussing these...

We analyze the role of distance from a university in the decision to attend higher education in Germany. Students who live near a university can avoid moving and the increased living expenses by commuting. Thus, transaction cost arguments would suggest that the greater the distance to the...

In general child care subsidies are widely accepted as a means to create equal chances for mothers in the labour market as well as for children. Although there is a general consensus that the use of child care should be publicly supported, there is no consensus on how this should be done....

This paper examines the effects of substantial changes in paid parental leave on child development and socio-economic development gaps. We exploit a German reform from 2007 that both expanded paid leave in the first year and removed paid leave in the second year following childbirth....

This paper studies the effects of Covid-19 related daycare and school closures on gender role attitudes toward maternal employment in Germany. We compare women and men with dependent children to those without children one year after the outbreak of the pandemic. Using data on gender role...

We examine the relationship between parenting activities and center-based care using time diary and survey data for mothers in Germany. While mothers using center-based care spend significantly less time in the presence of their child, we find that differences in the time spent on specific...

The COVID-19 pandemic and related closures of daycare centers and schools significantly increased the amount of care work done by parents. There is much speculation over whether the pandemic increased or decreased gender equality in parental care work. Based on representative data for Germany we...

This is the first paper to experimentally examine effects of information provision on beliefs about pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns of postgraduate education, enrollment intentions and realized enrollment. We find that our treatment causally affects beliefs measured six month after...

Grandparents act as the third largest caregiver after parental care and daycare in Germany, as in many Western societies. Adopting a double-generation perspective, we investigate the causal impact of this care mode on children's health, socio-emotional behavior, and school outcomes, as well as...