Supporting working mothers to balance their work and childcare responsibilities is a central objective of maternal and parental leave policies. Nearly all countries offer some forms of maternity and family leave programs for childbearing on a national basis. This chapter reviews various types of...

Ample empirical evidence has found that access to childcare for preschool children increases mothers’ labor force participation and employment. In this paper, we investigate whether increased childcare for primary school children improves the quality of jobs mothers find by estimating the...

There have been significant changes in both the fertility rates and fertility perception since 1970s. In this paper, we examine the relationship between government policies towards fertility and the fertility trends. Total fertility rate, defined as the number of children per woman, is used as...

This study examines the consequences of relaxing birth quotas by exploiting an exogenous two-child policy adopted by local Chinese governments on different dates. Using China's 2015 population census combined with a difference-in-differences framework, we find that the adoption of a two-child...

This paper evaluates the impact on employment probabilities of two training programs funded by the European Social Fund in the province of Bolzano, Italy. The programs were addressed to particularly vulnerable groups which were much less skilled and educated than the control group from the...

An expansive empirical literature estimates the causal effects of policies governing young women's confidential and legal access to contraception and abortion. I present a new review of changes in the historical policy environment in the United States that serve as the foundation of this work. I...

This paper analyzes the impact of supply-side abortion restrictions on aggregate abortion and birth rates in the United States. Specifically, I exploit state and time variation in the implementation of the first targeted regulation of abortion provider (TRAP) law in a state to identify the...

One goal of the paid family leave (PFL) is to help working mothers balance their careers and family responsibilities and hence improve the well-being of their infants. However, most studies of PFL on early childhood outcomes have been based on the analyses of surviving infants. If PFL reduces...

Social welfare payments (SWP) were designed with policy priority to transfer revenue to vulnerable groups, thereby addressing poverty and inequality. Previous studies have shown that SWPs alleviate poverty, but investigating their effect on well-being is sparse. We investigate the relationship...

This paper exploits an education policy in India generated by a 2010 schooling reform to examine the effect of education on women's family planning decisions. The key element of the reform was that it required students to complete eight years of primary education (age 6-14 years). I employ an...